Bug#887166: When invoked on local file, returns control to caller before file is read

[martin f krafft]

Package: firefox
Version: 57.0.4-1
Severity: normal

Most of the time when asking mutt to open an attachment in a new tab
in a running Firefox instance (using view-mailcap), the browser
reports an error:

  Firefox can’t find the file at /home/madduck/.tmp/mutt.html

It works some times, but that's the exception.

The reason seems to be that /usr/bin/firefox exits before the
running browser had a chance to read the file. When execution is
returned to the caller (mutt in this case), mutt then cleans up the
temporary file. By the time, the running Firefox instance wants to
read the file, it's gone. It's a classic race condition where mutt
seems to win most of the time.

It seems that the new /usr/bin/firefox process notifies the running
instance, but then doesn't receive or wait for confirmation that the
request has been processed (i.e. the file has been read).

I've searched the Web and Bugzilla, but could not find a report or
solution for this. I seem to recall this has happened before, but it
hasn't been a problem for many years.

I'm reporting to Debian rather than Bugzilla because it's possible
that Debian's packaging is responsible for this. If not, please
upstream the report, or tell me to.

Thanks,

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_NZ, LC_CTYPE=en_NZ.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_NZ:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages firefox depends on:
ii  debianutils               4.8.4
ii  fontconfig                2.12.6-0.1
ii  libatk1.0-0               2.26.1-2
ii  libc6                     2.26-3
ii  libcairo-gobject2         1.15.8-3
ii  libcairo2                 1.15.8-3
ii  libdbus-1-3               1.12.2-1
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2          0.108-3
ii  libevent-2.1-6            2.1.8-stable-4
ii  libffi6                   3.2.1-8
ii  libfontconfig1            2.12.6-0.1
ii  libfreetype6              2.8.1-1
ii  libgcc1                   1:7.2.0-19
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0        2.36.11-1
ii  libglib2.0-0              2.54.3-1
ii  libgtk-3-0                3.22.26-2
ii  libgtk2.0-0               2.24.31-5
ii  libhunspell-1.6-0         1.6.2-1
ii  libjsoncpp1               1.7.4-3
ii  libnspr4                  2:4.16-1+b1
ii  libnss3                   2:3.34.1-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0            1.40.14-1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.21.0-1
ii  libstartup-notification0  0.12-5
ii  libstdc++6                7.2.0-19
ii  libvpx4                   1.6.1-3
ii  libx11-6                  2:1.6.4-3
ii  libx11-xcb1               2:1.6.4-3
ii  libxcb-shm0               1.12-1
ii  libxcb1                   1.12-1
ii  libxcomposite1            1:0.4.4-2
ii  libxdamage1               1:1.1.4-3
ii  libxext6                  2:1.3.3-1+b2
ii  libxfixes3                1:5.0.3-1
ii  libxrender1               1:0.9.10-1
ii  libxt6                    1:1.1.5-1
ii  procps                    2:3.3.12-3
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.8.dfsg-5

firefox recommends no packages.

Versions of packages firefox suggests:
ii  fonts-lmodern          2.004.5-3
ii  fonts-stix [otf-stix]  1.1.1-4
ii  libcanberra0           0.30-6
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2       1.15.2-2
pn  mozplugger             <none>

-- no debconf information


-- 
 .''`.   martin f. krafft <madduck at d.o> @martinkrafft
: :'  :  proud Debian developer
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
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