Fills up .xsession-errors with "GetValue variable 1 (1)"

[era]

Binary package hint: firefox

Since (I think) sometime after I upgraded from Firefox 1.5 / Ubuntu 6.10, Firefox on all my machines, with or without safe mode, keeps on emitting uninformative messages on standard error.

For most users, who start up Firefox by clicking on its icon in the window manager of their choice, the effect is not directly visible, but will (soon enough) result in .xsession-errors becoming huge, and more important messages being lost, because the X server stops logging once the file grows large (and even before that, because these uninformative messages drown out more important and useful information).

As far as I can tell, this is a way to repro:

(This will start a second instance of Firefox, so you don't have to quit if you are reading this in a Firefox session.)

vnix$ firefox -ProfileManager -safe-mode

Create a new empty profile, select all the safe mode checkboxes (disable add-ons, reset toolbars and controls, bookmarks, preferences to defaults, etc) and continue in safe mode.

On the bookmarks toolbar, click the Mozilla "Getting Started" link. At this point, you should see the following output at the prompt where you started Firefox:

** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)

I don't know what it takes to get it to display more of these, but as I surf in my regular session, I see a steady trickle of them. I have not been able to pin down exactly what triggers these messages.

You may want to remove the new dummy profile after you're done. To the best of my understanding, you have to quit Firefox and start it with firefox -ProfileManager again.

To my surprise, I am unable to find an upstream bug about this, but that is probably more a reflection of my lack of competence (and/or the lack of a usable search facility in their bugzilla) than proof that it doesn't exist.

[era (era)]

Actually the regression in LP #31746 may prevent the repro steps from working in Gutsy. The machine where I'm writing this is on Feisty still.

[era (era)]

Still happening in Hardy (installed from beta CD from 2008-03-20, Firefox 3.0 beta 5)

There is another message when printing a hardcopy, but I've filed a separate bug about that; bug #222432

[era (era)]

I rigged zenity to display a dialog when these come up, and my screen got full of alert boxes when I surfed to this URL: http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/spamassassin-announce/?format=atom

Here's the result:
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)

The SpamAssassin Atom feed currently has 23 items on it, so it's not so simple as one line per item in Live Bookmarks, but it definitely seems to be related to RSS / Live Bookmarks.

In case somebody wants it, here's the loop I rigged:

tail -n 0 --follow=name ~/.xsession-errors |
while read line; do
  case $line in ""|*"Failed to get METAR data.");;
  *) date "+%c $line"; zenity --info --text="`date "+%c $line"`" & ;;
  esac;
done &

I get loads of weird errors from zenity but for quick notifications, this seems to work.

[era (era)]

Update: I also got this when opening a PDF file from http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/NSA_Nonresponsive_Docs_FOIA47415.pdf:

** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)

So it appears that this is related to plug-ins and extensions in general, not particularly RSS or Live Bookmarks after all.

I downloaded the source package and grepped for "Message:" and "GetValue" but I could not quickly pinpoint anything; iit seems that this message is generated on the fly, I guess by JavaScript.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Sorry but Firefox-2 is getting near EOS and they wont be fixing anything but major issues security issues mainly. Please try to reproduce this with Firefox-3.0 if you can reproduce this bug please click on Help > Report a problem and file the bug that way. This does not mean that it wasn't already fixed. if at all possible please try to reproduce this in -safe-mode by running firefox-3.0 -safe-mode

[era (era)]

Welp, as indicated already in comment #3, I managed to repro this trivially under Hardy, as I'm sure you could too. Just run tail -f on your .xsession-errors while starting up Firefox and surfing around.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Please dont change the status on mozilla bugs without reading how we do status of bugs. see link below.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Bugs

You also cant mark your own bugs confirmed see ubuntu-bugsquad for more info they are at #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 02:41:09AM -0000, John Vivirito wrote:
> Sorry but Firefox-2 is getting near EOS and they wont be fixing anything
> but major issues security issues mainly. Please try to reproduce this
> with Firefox-3.0 if you can reproduce this bug please click on Help >
> Report a problem and file the bug that way. This does not mean that it
> wasn't already fixed. if at all possible please try to reproduce this in
> -safe-mode by running firefox-3.0 -safe-mode
>
> ** Changed in: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
> Sourcepackagename: firefox => firefox-3.0
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

Yes, I agree that this output happens frequently and we should
investigate

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status confirmed
 importance low

Thanks,

 - Alexander

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Is this still a problem for anyone on 3.0.7?

[era (era)]

As one data point, I don't think I have seen this in a while now.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Closing per last comment.