Firefox plugin finder says it has installed plugin if user cancels plugin installation

[Robin Green]

Binary package hint: firefox

I was asked whether I wanted to install two plugins (a flash plugin and a video file playing plugin). I chose plugins for each of those tasks, and the first one installed successfully. When it came to installing the second one, I accidentally clicked the No button instead of the Yes button in apt-url. However, Firefox's plugin finder still displayed the result as "installed", even though it hadn't been installed, as Firefox's plugin finder correctly recognised when I reloaded the page and went through the process again.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: firefox 3.6.11+build3+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.10.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Oct 26 20:38:47 2010
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.11/firefox-bin
FirefoxPackages:
 firefox 3.6.11+build3+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.10.1
 firefox-gnome-support N/A
 firefox-branding 3.6.11+build3+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.10.1
 abroswer N/A
 abrowser-branding N/A
LocalLibraries: /home/greenrd/.mozilla/firefox/gpwplrtg.default/extensions/{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c}/components/libgoogletoolbarloader.so /home/greenrd/.mozilla/firefox/gpwplrtg.default/extensions/{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c}/libraries/libgoogletoolbar-ff3.so /home/greenrd/.mozilla/firefox/gpwplrtg.default/extensions/{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c}/components/libfrozen.so
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox
XsessionErrors: (process:3442): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this. I am going to try and reproduce this event on my system. Could you give me a set of instructions explaining how to make it occur? Include a video from the website that asked you to install the add-ons. Thanks.

*Marking incomplete until more info is gathered*

[Robin Green (greenrd)]

OK, it's probably slightly more complicated than it needs to be to reproduce the bug, but here goes:

I first installed the Firefox add-on FlashVideoReplacer ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/161869/ ) and restarted Firefox to activate that add-on. (The purpose of this add-on is to dynamically replace the Flash video player on sites like Youtube with a native video player plugin, which for me, lets me watch Youtube videos in a fully-functioning free software environment.)

Note: FlashVideoReplacer doesn't actually remove the flash content from the page instantly, so Firefox still believes that a Flash plugin is needed for that page (whether or not that is true, I don't know). If you went to Youtube without the FlashVideoReplacer plugin installed, I don't believe you would be asked to install *two* plugins, only a flash plugin.

Then I went to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8&u=XIN2tPVAwa4&list=FL&feature=BF to watch a video and Firefox prompted me at the top of the window to install plugins. I did this, and selected gnash for the flash plugin and gecko media player for the video player plugin.

Then apt-url (or something of a similar name) was launched to install the plugins. However, it gets launched two times - once for each plugin. For the first plugin, I clicked Yes to confirm installation, that installed fine and then for the second plugin, I clicked No by accident. I then saw a dialog saying that *both* plugins had been installed successfully.

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Thanks for the excellent instructions! Very helpful!

I followed all you steps and got the same results you did except for the error. Generally speaking when we get bug reports we ask if the user can replicate at any time. Is this the case with you? Can you make this anomaly occur again or was it a one time thing?

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

The plugin finder has been discontinued.