Nightly Troubleshooting Information

[smsmith]

This thread is intended to be used by the nightly builds testers to post resolutions to some of the more common and not so common problems that arise from testing the official nightly trunk and branch builds.

Please feel free to add your own posts with advice and resolutions to the problems you have run across. Needless chatter and the like will be split at a moderator's discretion. It is proper to ask a question related to a specific post in this thread due to errors or misunderstandings.

Problems with specific branch or trunk builds should be posted in the current branch or trunk nightly discussion thread.

Please try and keep this thread as clean as possible to maintain its usefulness.

[smsmith]

Most of you out there wondering why your nightly won't start up no matter what you do and have countlessly redownloaded, uninstalled, reinstalled and/or otherwise attempted to clean out/erase all traces of Firefox (some of you even going to the registry) might have what's looking to be a very common problem.

Symptoms:
• Immediate crash/exit @ startup w/o visual error message
• Never able to run the build period, even in safe mode

Affected OS'es:
Windows only - If you have Lin/Mac, this doesn't apply to you.

Cause:
One or more files on your system may have had their dates/timestamps compromised or corrupted. And for one reason or another, it's causing Firefox to instantly crash. Since 98% of normal computer users get viruses, trojans, and malware at one time or another - there's always something that's left behind even after a through clean.

The directory I usually see people report the file(s) being in is: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

But there could be others.

Solution:
Findold tool - Download exe and run. Should give you a list of very old files w/ dates ranging from 1901, 1910, etc.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\mswinsck.ocx has invalid Write time: 1901-07-13 09:13:00 UT

Touch program (Win) - This utility, I believe, allows you to manually change the timestamps/dates of the file if I'm not mistaken.

Related Bug:
Bug 331404 – NSS may crash in initialization when windows file system contains REALLY OLD files

Note: There maybe more causes for your build not running than listed above but this is a very unthinkable cause to suspect which makes it very likely that it could help you out, given how many people have dealt w/ a trojan, virus, or malware of some sort.

Warning: You should also double check the file you are about to alter or remove via Google or other reasearch. But it should be very safe to assume a file dated "1901" isn't legitimate.

[TimTucker]

Problem:
Minefield crashes when accessing certain pages (notably ebay search results) when Adblock Plus is installed

Solution:
Install the most recent development build of Adblock Plus:
http://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/

[hhh]

Firefox 1.5 style tab close buttons...
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons

Extension compatibility checking override...
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Extensions.checkCompatibility

Running two or more versions of Firefox simultaneously...
http://the-edmeister.home.comcast.net/a ... -file.html

[trolly]

The batch method is not required anymore. FF2 and above support the -no-remote command line switch which replaced the environment variable.
Simply make a short cut with the command line 'firefox -no-remote -P "my_profile"'.

[hhh]

^Well, shiver me timbers! How did I miss that? So, trolly (or anyone who knows), is this a correct example?
"C:\Program Files\3.0\firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -p "3.0"

[trolly]

If you have a profile named "3.0" ...

[BenBasson]

Is there a solution to Minefield setting itself as the default browser when updating?

[hhh]

Cusser, I've never had that happen. You're on XP, right? I couldn't find a bugzilla bug for that.

[Swami]

Is there a solution to Minefield setting itself as the default browser when updating?

I would like to know that as well. That started happening some time back for me on XP. Now I have to keep "Always check to see if Firefox is default browser on startup" enabled in all my 2.0.0.3 profiles or they try to open with Minefield, even though I have my Minefield shortcut pointing to a specific profile.

[malliz]

Is there a solution to Minefield setting itself as the default browser when updating?

Pretty sure that's caused by the workaround for the Vista bug where Firefox couldn't be made default browser

[smsmith]

It is. If someone posts a workaround they've found suitable, that would be great.

[phiw13]

On OS X, running both Firefox 2.0.x and a Trunk nightly build together is rather easy.
Quit the browser it is running.
Open Terminal.app, and paste the following:

Code: Select all

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager

Firefox 2.0 will launch with the profile manager, and your default profile selected. Create a new profile or rename the default one if you wish.
Make sure you uncheck the 'Don't ask at startup' box.
Launch Firefox.
Now you can launch Minefield as well, just like you would always do. The profile manager will open and you'll be able to select a new profile or create one for usage with Minefield.

notes
* The command above assumes you have Firefox installed in its standard location: the 'Application' folder.
* You only need to run that command once. For all subsequent launches, the profile manager will open.

[oldtimer]

Themes BREAK FAYT (Find As You Type)

If FAYT is failing for you or producing weird behaviors, uninstall/disable your custom/3rd party theme. I believe a lot of themes have to have the code dealing w/ FAYT updated so they can work accordingly.

This issue is not new and has been around since the beginning or early stages of Minefield.

[spage]

Here are my notes about getting nightly updates. I hope they're useful, please replace these with something more accurate. I'm not sure if these belong as a top-level post, or maybe additions to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_Update . http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update#Links has links to a lot of technical details of software update.

If you're using a trunk build, you may want to set Firefox's Help > Check for Updates to check for nightly updates. In the Minefield program directory, the file defaults/pref/channel-prefs.js specifies what channel to check, change this to "nightly". More details are in the KB article http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_Update

There are other settings for updates that you can view and change using about:config, all starting with "app.update."

The browser gets information about any available updates by requesting the URL stored in the preference app.update.url, as of June 2007 this is https//aus2.mozilla.org/update/2/%PRODUCT%/%VERSION%/%BUILD_ID% /%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL%/%OS_VERSION%/update.xml
The browser substitutes values for '%VARIABLE%', e.g. https://aus2.mozilla.org/update/2/Firef ... update.xml , and when you manually choose Help > Check for Updates it tacks ?force=1 on the end.
(AUS stands for Application Update Service.)

You can use an extension like Live HTTP Headers to see the Help > Check for Updates request.

If successful, the server response is an XML file describing available updates. Note that in the case of any errors the default XML packet from the update server is an empty XML <updates></updates>, not an error message or 404.

If there's no update available for a build...
??! What next? I just check the "Official [trunk] build" thread to see if anyone mentions problems, and keep retrying Help > Check for Updates.

http://update-watch.localgho.st/ serves as a monitor for the nightly update system. Its first link takes you to a nightly update monitor that shows the state of the update for several product+version combinations:

• fx=Firefox, tb=Thunderbird, sb=Sunbird, and sm=SeaMonkey
• in each tree: trunk=version 3 of each product, 1.8=current of each (Firefox 2, etc.), 1.8.0=previous of each (Firefox 1.5, etc.), central=next-generation Mozilla2 prototyping

If the automatic update fails you can always download and install a full nightly build, there's a link to it in each "Official [trunk] build" post.

If there is an update available, the XML file will have an update entry describing it. This usually has a URL for the patch, e.g. http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... -04-trunk/ firefox-3.0a6pre.en-US.win32.complete.mar. A patch update ends in .mar (for "Mozilla ARchive").

If the updates XML file is empty but there is a .mar file and you're sure you know what you are doing, it is possible to download the .mar file and do a manual patch; see http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update ... a_MAR_file