[SOLVED] Firefox Continuously Opens Windows

[LazarusLong]

Truthfully, I don't know if this is a Firefox bug or not, but I've only experienced this on my Fedora machine.

There doesn't seem to be any particular pattern, and it's happened in trusted sites when clicking on various links (like this one for instance), but Firefox will suddenly go mad and just start opening window after window.

The only way I can get out of it is 'ps -ef' 'ing for the firefox process and killing it.

This has happened under both 10 and 12.

Submitted a forum post on mozilla's support site here:
Firefox Opens 'Infinite' Windows During a Session

I'd close this thread because it is not a linux issue if I could. Apologies for posting this here.

[Rubberman]

Open the firefox preferences->Content page and enable the Block pop-up windows check box. See if that helps. Some sites are really bad about pop-ups, especially if they have buggy html or java script.

[LazarusLong]

Thanks Rubberman.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case here. Pop-ups are blocked as a matter of course.

I also found a report on the mozilla support site that is pretty similar in behavior, though the OS and version are different:
Firefox 3.6 tries to open an infinite number of instances, each with an infinite number of tabs

I found sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak in .mozilla and zapped them. We'll see if that makes the problem go away. It's trying to prove a negative in this case, but that's all I have for now. I guess if, a year from now, I don't see this behavior again, I'll be reasonably certain that was the problem.

[Rubberman]

Ok. You didn't mention that you were using 3.6 in your original post. New stuff, new bugs... Caveat User!

[LazarusLong]

No, I think you misread something.

I'm using 3.5.6 Fed. 12, the other user that reported the similar problem in Windows is using 3.6. He also reported it happening upon Firefox's startup. I'm well into a session before it happens.

I haven't used 3.6 at all and my windows install (3.5.7) has never shown this behavior. That is what originally led me to post here, since I was only experiencing it in Fedora. Additionally, I had experienced this with Fed. 10, and 3.0.x.

[Rubberman]

I've had a number of FF versions, up to my current ones (3.0.16 and 3.5.x) go into the "Infinite window/tab" mode when clicking on email links, but not regular ones.

[LazarusLong]

Curiouser and Curiouser...

The most recent link that blew up Firefox for me (and triggered this thread) was a Jamendo 'Play' link. I clicked on it, nothing happened for a few seconds, so I clicked on it again, and then the windows started spawning. I'll have to keep a closer eye on this pattern. It happened so randomly (seemingly) before that I never remembered what link I was trying to click and where I was.

I received a reply to my post on Mozilla Support: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/568766. However, their suggested fix (remove Firefox from being an 'Open With' application) doesn't seem to be the case for me.

I did find something curious though, in that MozPlugger was selected to be the opening/handling media for the majority of application types, including Excel/Word docs and OpenOffice doc types. Unfortunately, I never looked at the set-up before the upgrade, so I have no way of telling if this has always been configured like that, or if it somehow got changed in the process.

[Rubberman]

Maybe you got pwnd with a drive-by? Or a site that got pwnd by malware is trying to infect you?

[LazarusLong]

That's what I thought the first time it happened (don't remember where I was when it happened). But the times that it's happened since it's been on trusted sites.

Plus, with the number of similarly reported problems, it seems more like a firefox problem than possible malware or other attack.

Of course, it hasn't happened since I started this thread, so there's no a whole lot more data to go on. Maybe zapping the old sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files did the trick.

My bigger concern right now is trying to figure out why flash is suddenly pooched: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red...2-upgrade.html

Who knows, maybe it's related somehow, though I've experienced this problem before, when flash was still working, prior to my upgrade.

[LazarusLong]

Marking this thread as solved, since I haven't experienced the infinite window issue since taking the steps noted earlier. Of course, now that I'm closing this, it'll probably happen again.