Opening firefox by clicking on links in thunderbird breaks https

[Mika Fischer]

I'm running current edgy.

If I click on an https link while Firefox is closed (eg. in Thunderbird), firefox gives me an error page:

###
Problem loading page

Unexpected response from server

Firefox doesn't know how to communicate with the server.

 * Check to make sure your system has the Personal Security Manager installed.
 * This might be due to a non-standard configuration on the server.
###

In this state https-links completely fail to work.

If I click on the link while firefox is already running (eg. started from the panel) everything works as expected.

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

Addition: The problem does only occur when starting firefox by clicking on a link (any link, http or https makes no difference) in thunderbird.

If I start firefox from the panel or eg. by right-clicking on a link in gnome-terminal everything works fine.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

I can confirm this as ive been messing with it since early this morning. I have tried --purge firefox and installing it again. seems to have gone away for now but this was just done maybe 2 hours ago so its not enough time to test it to see if fixed. im also gonna try to update FF to nightly build through firefox.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

scratch the update to nightly build in FF i forgot you cant with a ubuntu built FF. Maybe an upgrade to thunderbird to match FF?

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

i just built firefox 2.0b2 by following the wiki on upgrading firefox. I no longer have this issue. Would like to request FF 2.0b1 in edgy be bumped up to latest nightly build as it fixes a few issues.

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

Starting firefox via clicking on a link in thunderbird prevents firefox from using saved passwords as well.

In short, when starting firefox via thunderbird it's somehow severly crippled and barely usable...

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

This is still present with the latest firefox package.

[Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse)]

I have this issue on a fully updated edgy firefox. To confirm, if I manually open firefox and go to the site, everything works (including https://) until I close it.

If I follow a link to any site (including normal http:) from Thunderbird, no https:// links work for the session.

[Francesco Montorsi (f18m-cpp217828)]

I have this same problem but mine seems to be even worse: I can't manage to open *any* https link in FF even if it's already started and if I copy&paste the URL from another app.
(and I get that screen with the "Check to make sure your system has the Personal Security Manager installed" etc etc).

I can workaround this only using Mozilla Web Browser.

I'm using FF package 1.99+2.0b2+dfsg-1ubuntu2

[Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse)]

> I can't manage to open *any* https link in FF even if it's already started and if
> I copy&paste the URL from another app.

This sounds like the same behaviour that we are having, Francesco. As I said, if the browser is opened by clicking a link in an external program, no https: links work, even if they are typed in.

If I open the browser from the panel or menu then all https links work.

[Francesco Montorsi (f18m-cpp217828)]

>If I open the browser from the panel or menu then all https links work.
if I try to do the same and open Firefox from the menu or panel and then type e.g. "https://sourceforge.net" I get that same error screen.

[Wenzhuo Zhang (wenzhuo)]

I can confirm this problem in Ubuntu 6.10 beta with the latest updates applied. Since the release of 6.10 will happen this month, please bump the severity to critical.

[James Troup (elmo)]

I've managed to track this down to the fact that thunderbird spawns firebird with /usr/lib/mozilla-thunderbird at the front of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. As a result the copy of libnss in there gets preference to firefox's and is presumably what causes the problem. Forcefully inserting /usr/lib to the front of LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the /usr/bin/firefox wrapper would be enough to work around this problem.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

James Troup writes ("[Bug 57923] Re: Opening firefox by clicking on links in thunderbird breaks https"):
> I've managed to track this down to the fact that thunderbird spawns
> firebird with /usr/lib/mozilla-thunderbird at the front of
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH. As a result the copy of libnss in there gets
> preference to firefox's and is presumably what causes the problem.
> Forcefully inserting /usr/lib to the front of LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the
> /usr/bin/firefox wrapper would be enough to work around this problem.

!

I think stripping out mozilla-thunderbird would be a better plan.
Thanks very much for your investigation.

Ian.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Perhaps thunderbird should reset its LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the old value once it's started up, unless it really needs to spawn external programs which use it

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I'm working on the obvious workaround in the firefox wrapper.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I agree that mozilla-thunderbird should not leave this stuff in the environment when invoking external programs. Ideally, it would be compiled with appropriate rpath options to make setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH unnecessary.

Note that firefox itself almost certainly has a similar bug: it leaves LD_LIBRARY_PATH containing /usr/lib/firefox when it runs external programs.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

So is the issue here the fact that we have Firefox 2.0 and T-bird 1.5,
and the "embedded" security library in t-bird does not work for FF 2.0?

Mark

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I think I have deployed the workaround in the firefox wrapper script in 1.99+2.0b2+dfsg-1ubuntu3. Since the change was very small I have foregone my usual test build, instead conducting a few ad-hoc local tests.

I'd appreciate it if when this is built, someone who is affected (ie, someone who uses thunderbird) could test whether it's fixed for them. If this is not possible I'll have to set up a test installation of thunderbird to reproduce the problem ...

Thanks.

[Sebastian Brocks (beerockxs)]

I will check this out as soon as the new package is built.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

I seem to recall someone saying it was ANY link, so it would be worth
testing that other apps (gaim, etc) work too.

Mark

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 06:54:39PM -0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>
> I seem to recall someone saying it was ANY link, so it would be worth
> testing that other apps (gaim, etc) work too.

If there's a problem with another app, it's unlikely to be the same bug.
This one looks pretty clear-cut.

--
 - mdz

[Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse)]

Excellent - this now works for me (following an https:// launchpad link from TB). Thanks!

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

Thanks, Aaron.

[Dean Sas (dsas)]

There's two duplicates bug 64911 and bug 67148 which are being affected to.

[Dean Sas (dsas)]

that is duplicates of the issue happening in epiphany

[Ryan Rawdon (flieslikeabrick)]

I encountered this when doing a partial upgrade to edgy for things like firefox2 and some other choice apps I wanted to check out. I fixed it by upgrading libnss3 to the version in edgy then purging firefox and reinstalling it. I got the idea to do that from a suggestion for FC at LQ.org: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=492018

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not an epiphany issue, thunderbird should not change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH

[Hk (kinebahan)]

Hi,

I've recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft and from that point Firefox (2.0+0dfsg-0ubuntu3) is not able to open https websites at all !!!!

works in konqueror 3.5.5, works in mozilla 1.7.13

Anyone as a cluet o solve this issue ?

Cheers,
Hk

[Hk (kinebahan)]

Hi,

I've recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft and from that point Firefox (2.0+0dfsg-0ubuntu3) is not able to open https websites at all !!!!

works in konqueror 3.5.5, works in mozilla 1.7.13

Anyone as a clue to solve this issue ?

Cheers,
Hk

[Stephen D Kamm (s-kamm)]

I am using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS desktop, 64-bit; updated as prompted by Synaptic.

My e-mail client is mozilla-thunderbird; firefox is selected as "Web Browser" in "Preferred Applications".

After experiencing Bug #89023, I "Completely Removed" firefox (and thunderbird) using Synaptic.

After re-booting, I installed firefox 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.10-0ubuntu0.6.06.2 and mozilla-thunderbird 1.5.0.9-0ubuntu0.6.06. See details https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/89023.

Https function was restored in the case where firefox was already open, however, in the case where firefox is closed, thunderbird is open, and I click a link to an https site, the "Personal Security Manager" error message referred above and in the initial Bug #89023 report appears.

I cannot open a link to https from within an e-mail unless firefox is already open.

It appears that other browers, such as dillo and mozilla, work correctly as "Preferred Application".

[Andreas Schildbach (schildbach)]

I'm having this problem too, on Ubuntu Dapper 32bit.

There's a voluminous thread on

http://www.nabble.com/Firefox---Unexpected-response-from-server-t3306658.html

[Heinrich Wunram (h-wunram)]

I had the same problem as described here. I couldn't enter webpages starting with https. Now I found the reason for this strange behaviour: In my firefox folder (/usr/lib/firefox) was an old version of libnss3.so (that of firefox 1.0.7). So I copied libnss3.so from /usr/lib to the firefox folder (don't forget to make it executable) and now my firefox is working correctly again. May be that this procedure might also help other posters in this thread to solve their problem.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

seems to be fixed in feisty (opening https link from thunderbird to epiphany with epiphany not running beforehand)

[dmuir (dmuir)]

This has broken again in the recent Firefox 3.6 upgrade for Karmic.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

@dmuir,
it would be better to open a new bug report, as the cause may be different to this old bug. if you run:

ubuntu-bug firefox

it will automatically attach all the version details to the report. you could mention this bug in the new bug.

thanks