kfmclient won't exit after calling firefox

[Martin von Gagern]

Binary package hint: konqueror

I've configured my kubuntu intrepid beta to use firefox as my default browser. I called ubuntu-bug and got a new tab in my already running firefox. As the invoked second instance of the firefox application only acted as a remote control, it should have returned immediately. Nevertheless, ubuntu-bug remained running, even after I closed first the bug report tab and then firefox itself. I can reproduce the issue calling "kfmclient openURL https://bugs.launchpad.net/" on the command line. As kfmclient employs two threads at this moment, I have a bit of trouble debugging this. I still haven't figured out how to get backtraces of all threads. I hope that apport managed to do so in this report here. The console output reads thus:

kfmclient(13725) ClientApp::doIt: Creating ClientApp
kfmclient(13725) ClientApp::createNewWindow: Using external browser "!firefox"

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/kfmclient
Package: konqueror 4:4.1.2-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=de_DE.utf8
 LC_MESSAGES=C
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: kdebase
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-6-generic i686

[Martin von Gagern (gagern)]

Same issue happens if firefox wan't already running, but got started for the bug report and closed afterwards.

[Simon Ruggier (simon80)]

I'm on x86_64, and see the same issue.

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

I first noticed this with a `bzr lp-open` command which just uses the python webbrowser module.
Stepping into that with the python debugger it seemed to be stuck on os.waitpid. Trying the following command from the command line I get the firefox browser to open a tab and load the page, but the application doesn't return control back to the shell.

$ kfmclient openURL 'http://slashdot.org'
kfmclient(25556) ClientApp::doIt: Creating ClientApp
kfmclient(25556) ClientApp::createNewWindow: Using external browser "firefox.desktop"
^C

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

Also noticed with `ubuntu-bug` script to file other bugs.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Jonathan, is kfmclient supposed to block? Its purpose seems similar to gnome-open, which is a "remote control". If it really should behave that way, please reassign to apport, and then we need another python2.{5,6,3000} tasks to update the webbrowser module.

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

I've found that if I export BROWSER=firefox, then the python module doesn't use kfmclient :)

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Fixed in KDE 4.3 RC3.