Thunderbird opens new Firefox browser at home page

[DiBosco]

With the last upgrade of the Thunderbird client, on my desktop, when I click on a link, it opens a new Firefox browser at its homepage rather than a new tab in the already opened browser at the clicked link in the email. Oddly, on my laptop, it's unnaffected.

Anyone know how to solve this please?

[dude67]

I don't know the answer, but I do have the same problem. Whenever I click on a hyperlink on a T-bird e-mail, I get a new Firefox window with my homepage. The same if I choose right click and Open Link in Browser. I need to copy the link location and paste it on the URL bar of Firefox to get it loading.

[doktor5000]

Is this with Mageia 1 or cauldron? AFAICT no settings have changed in between.

[dude67]

Mine is 32 bit Mageia1. Duly updated.

[doktor5000]

Well, i've no problem with thunderbird, it opens links in firefox in tabs as always, can't reproduce here.

Can you please tell how/if you set your default browser?

[dude67]

(Sorry for hijacking this thread!) I haven't set it up in any special way. I've always used Firefox in my Linux boxes. It's set up as the default browser, but I haven't set it up... And as I said it's opening up Firefox, but in a new window and with my homepage...

This has become a problem quite recently - I believe during the T-bird update as DiBosco noticed.

Here's version information:
Firefox: 10.0.4
T-bird: 10.0.4
Mageia1: $ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.38.8-server-10.mga #1 SMP Wed Jan 25 11:27:30 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
(even though my computer is a laptop)

[DiBosco]

I haven't done anything at all in terms of setting up my default browser. Like most things on Linux these days it just worked. (How cool a thing that is to be able to write!)

On my laptop it still works; on my desktop, after the last but one TB upgrade, dude67 and I are seemingly having identical problems. Click a link in TB, a new FF browser is opened always at FF's homepage.

[doktor5000]

Maybe both of you want to have a look at https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2051 for debugging this?

Or provide the output of (as user)

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echo $BROWSER
grep ht ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
xdg-settings get default-web-browser
gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command


[DiBosco]

I use KDE, not Gnome I'm afraid.

[DiBosco]

There's something seriously weird going on.

Even if I delete prefs.js, start again and put /usr/bin/firefox www.bbc.co.uk as follows:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/firefox www.bbc.co.uk");

It opens my homepage (google.co.uk).

So the question is: what does Mageia do with TB that bypasses the standard way of launching external apps? I guess we need a programmer to answer that.

[doktor5000]

We're not doing anything to bypass something, the preference you quoted is not effective since quite some time, see my comment here f.ex:
http://svnweb.mageia.org/packages/updates/1/mozilla-thunderbird/current/SOURCES/mozilla-thunderbird-mageia-default-prefs.js?revision=210136&view=markup

5 # not used anymore, see upstream developer comment: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550755#c1
6 # and related Mandriva bug report https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=58784
7 # Make hyperlinks work
8 #pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "COMMAND");
9 #pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "COMMAND");
10 #pref("network.protocol-handler.app.ftp", "COMMAND");

FWIW, i'm mageia's thunderbird maintainer, that's why i asked for the output of the commands, as Firefox is a GTK program, so essentially it uses GNOME settings.
Please don't ask me for the reasons for that, i'm no upstream developer, only they know why they switched away from using program-internal settings to using something external.

[dude67]

Or provide the output of (as user)

Code: Select all

echo $BROWSER
grep ht ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
xdg-settings get default-web-browser
gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command


I had a problem with kde4 settings and had to recreate .kde4 directory. But the TB link problem still persists.

Here's the output of that list you asked for

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$ echo $BROWSER
/usr/bin/www-browser
$ grep ht ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
$ xdg-settings get default-web-browser
firefox
$ gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
/usr/bin/firefox "%s"


[doktor5000]

I had a problem with kde4 settings and had to recreate .kde4 directory. But the TB link problem still persists.

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$ gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
/usr/bin/firefox "%s"


OK, so at least the last setting is not the default one, also seems " " were added around %s. The default should work, see below.
Here the output looks like this:

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[doktor5000@Mageia1 ~]$ gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
www-browser %s
[doktor5000@Mageia1 ~]$ grep ht ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
text/html=firefox.desktop;chromium.desktop;chromium-browser.desktop;

The two other settings are the same.Can you try if

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www-browser http://www.google.com
xdg-open http://www.google.com

open a new tab with http://www.google.com in firefox?

Normally you only fire up systemsetings -> Default Applications -> and enter firefox as Browser in there. Or at least that's what i do, and it works for me.

[dude67]

OK, both commands open up http://www.google.com in a new tab in FF. So no problem there.

And here is a snapshot of the default applications.

[dude67]

I don't know what happened, but now it seems to be working fine!

[doktor5000]

@DiBosco: What about you?

[DiBosco]

Hmmm

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gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
/home/robertw/Installs/firefox/firefox %s

Now, that firefox was one I manually installed because the repositories were so far behind the official release and I was having problems with the older version that was in the repository. I don't know how the system updated that value though. I also don't understand how it's launching a browser at all as that whole directory was deleted. The KDE setup thingy that dude put a screenshot of up just says firefox exactly as his.

If I change it like this:

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gconftool-2 --type string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command "/usr/bin/firefox %s"

and check it like this:

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gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command/usr/bin/firefox %s

It makes no difference.

[doktor5000]

What about the other settings i asked for?

[DiBosco]

This one?

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[robertw@localhost ~]$ xdg-settings get default-web-browser
firefox

[doktor5000]

Yeah, and

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echo $BROWSER
grep ht ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

Also, which desktop environment are you using, and can you try if

Code: Select all

www-browser http://www.google.com
xdg-open http://www.google.com

open a new tab with http://www.google.com in firefox?

[DiBosco]

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[robertw@localhost ~]$ echo $BROWSER
/usr/bin/www-browser
[robertw@localhost ~]$ grep ht ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
grep: /home/robertw/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list: No such file or directory

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www-browser http://www.bbc.co.uk
xdg-open http://www.bbc.co.uk

Both of these open a new tab in the already open browser at the Beeb homepage.

I'm using KDE.

[doktor5000]

Probably you should set that gconf setting you previously mentioned back to the default, which would be

Code: Select all

www-browser %s

[DiBosco]

I'm afraid that doesn't work either.

[DiBosco]

With a fresh install of Mageia 2 (not an upgrade), but keeping /opt and /home partitions intact, the same thing is happening. I assume this must mean it's something in my /home directory that is affecting this?

[doktor5000]

Yep. Just create a new user and experiment with that one.