firefox crashes with "gtk_tree_sortable_set_sort_column_id: assertion `GTK_IS_TREE_SORTABLE (sortable)' failed" in file selection dialog

[Steve Langasek]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Using the file browser to attach a file to a bug report, firefox reproducibly crashes for me when I try to use filename autocompletion. If I type 'open' (matching the filename 'open-iscsi-236640.debdiff'), it doesn't crash. If I type 'open-', it crashes reliably.

Console output is:
(firefox:9466): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_tree_sortable_set_sort_column_id: assertion `GTK_IS_TREE_SORTABLE (sortable)' failed

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Jun 27 14:39:25 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.11+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.30-9.10-generic
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.30-9-generic x86_64

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Testing again, I find that it's only when using tab completion on a string that includes a '-' that firefox crashes. Typing 'open-' doesn't trigger it, only the tab completion afterwards does; and if I choose a filename to tab complete that doesn't contain a hyphen, firefox does not crash.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 391398, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Sorry, after further thought, this might be better as a separate bug. There's another GTK bug that produces the same error with different symptoms, bug 390035 in addition to bug 391398. I'm guessing this should be moved to GTK, but I'll let you evaluate it for yourself. It seems like rolling back to 2.17.0 fixes the problems for some people.