Additionally, firefox disappears each time for some reasons from the favorites bar if I log out. If I relogin and do "add to favorites", firefox appears there, but only until exiting the gnome3 session.

It seems that all described effects do not depend on icedtea-web, because erasing icedtea-web from my box has no influence on this behaviour. Seems that another one is the culprit :-(

firefox-17.0.1-1.fc18.x86_64

I have to disagree. Observe:
1. Start firefox from gnome-shell → it starts normally
2. yum update icedtea-web
3. Start firefox from gnome-shell → it starts normally
4. Close firefox
5. Start firefox from gnome-shell → does not work anymore, process is running but no window appears
6. yum downgrade icedtea-web
7. killall firefox (maybe you missed this step, Joachim)
8. Start firefox from gnome-shell → it works again

If this is not enough of a proof that icedtea-web then I'm not sure what is. True, it might be that it triggers some odd behaviour in firefox itself, but it definitely is necessary to see the bug.

(In reply to comment #4)
> I have to disagree. Observe:
> 1. Start firefox from gnome-shell → it starts normally
> 2. yum update icedtea-web
> 3. Start firefox from gnome-shell → it starts normally
> 4. Close firefox
> 5. Start firefox from gnome-shell → does not work anymore, process is
> running but no window appears
> 6. yum downgrade icedtea-web
> 7. killall firefox (maybe you missed this step, Joachim)
> 8. Start firefox from gnome-shell → it works again
> 
> If this is not enough of a proof that icedtea-web then I'm not sure what is.
> True, it might be that it triggers some odd behaviour in firefox itself, but
> it definitely is necessary to see the bug.

Hi Julian,

I cannot agree:

1. Creating a fresh user and then logging in with this new user will run firefox from the favourites bar too! Not only from a terminal window!

2. The described effect occurs even if icedtea-web is completely uninstalled. I think that some file in ~/.local or ~/.config is or are the culprint(s) (See pt. 1!)

After investigating a little bit, I can report that by removing ~/.local (by root) and relogin, I got rid from the problem!

My final post: It seems that copying

/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop

to

~/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

could solve all pain:-)

The difference between /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop and
~/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop was the additional line

Hidden=true

at the end of .local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Killing .local did not work for me. Even if it did, it is hardly a solution for an update that is introduced as a 0-day one.

Changing component, as this seems unrelated to icedtea-web.

I had the same problem, and downgrading icedtea-web from 1.3.1-2 to 1.3.1-1 fixed it for me.

I tried first to check if the desktop files was the problem, then I reinstalled firefox. Noting helped.

Downgrading icedtea-web helped.

After downgrading icedtea-web, I tried to upgrade it again.

The problem reappeared. Firefox did not start.
Downgrading icedtea-web fixed it again.

So, why this seems to have to do with icedtea-web or not, I do not know. But it certainly seems to be related.

I have started to notice this too lately, it is hard to pinpoint as it does not always happen, but for sure a me too here.

Will investigate more.

I can also confirme that downgrading icedtea-web (from 1.3.1-2.fc18 to icedtea-web-1.3.1-1.fc18.x86_64) solved the issue. As soon as I upgraded the package again firefox stop working from the launcher.

I managed to do a diff between the contents of the packages, and the only differences I found where these:

diff -r icedtea-web-1.3.1-1/ icedtea-web-1.3.1-2/
Binary files icedtea-web-1.3.1-1/usr/lib64/IcedTeaPlugin.so and icedtea-web-1.3.1-2/usr/lib64/IcedTeaPlugin.so differ
diff -r icedtea-web-1.3.1-1/usr/share/applications/itweb-settings.desktop icedtea-web-1.3.1-2/usr/share/applications/itweb-settings.desktop
9c9
< X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.20
---
> X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.21
diff -r icedtea-web-1.3.1-1/usr/share/applications/javaws.desktop icedtea-web-1.3.1-2/usr/share/applications/javaws.desktop
11c11
< X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.20
---
> X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.21
Binary files icedtea-web-1.3.1-1/usr/share/icedtea-web/netx.jar and icedtea-web-1.3.1-2/usr/share/icedtea-web/netx.jar differ

By the way, I'm running Firefox firefox-18.0-1.fc18.x86_64

Weird. I can't see why a .desktop file version would prevent Firefox from starting. 

When it fails, is anything written to ~/.xsession-errors?

Not a single error on my home, or my firefox profile.

Dunno if this helps, but looking at the libraries linked against IcedTeaPlugin.so in both versions I came out with this:

diff ldd_IcedTeaPlugin.so-1.3.1-1 ldd_IcedTeaPlugin.so-1.3.1-2 
2a3,5
> libatk-bridge-2.0.so.0
> libatspi.so.0
> libcairo-gobject.so.2
4a8
> libdbus-1.so.3
13a18
> libgdk-3.so.0
15d19
< libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0
23c27
< libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
---
> libgtk-3.so.0



Where ">" are libraries added on version 1.3.1-2 (not on 1.3.1-1) and "<" are libraries removed from 1.3.1-1 (not present on 1.3.1-2). So it seens the new version was compiled agains gtk3 (> libgtk-3.so.0) where the previous one was compiled against gtk2 (< libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0).

Maybe the plugin is trying to talk with the gnome-shell when invoked from it?
Just guessing... I'm not really a GTK/Gnome developer.

Ah, that is true. I know the -2 version was compiled with GTK3 support; it was a fix for an open bug that requested it.

I am going to re-assign this bug to icedtea-web and to Jiri, who is the author of the original change in -2.

Jiri, can you please take a look at the above? Seems like compiling against 1.3 has some odd (and bad) side-effects :/

I had the same problem.

I fixed it by disabling/removing "Adblock Plus" extension. Installed from Mozilla, not repos.

firefox-18.0-1.fc18.x86_64
icedtea-web-1.3.1-2.fc18.x86_64

hope it helps.

I also have "Adblock Plus", from Mozilla installed. But I'm not at home right now to test it.

After further testing. it seems related to icedtea-web and adblock plus for me.

If I install both, the problem appears.

If I install one only, no problem.

I confirm that enabling and disabling Adblock Plus add-on in Firefox has the same effect on my setup also.

Adblock plus 2.2.1
icedtea-web-1.3.1-2.fc18.x86_64 
Does not work well together.

Disabling Adblock Plus makes icedtea-web-1.3.1-2 work ok.  I do not have to remove Adblock Plus, it is enough to disable it.

I use firefox-18.0-1.fc18.x86_64

Same here. Even tried installing mozilla-adblockplus from the repos, but i get the same thing as others.

I have the same problem with launching Firefox from either the favorites toolbar or (after removing from there) the search bar. I can only start Firefox from the commandline.

icedtea-web-1.3.1-3.fc18 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 18.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/icedtea-web-1.3.1-3.fc18

Hi. The above update should fix this issue. 

I apologize that this got shipped without us noticing. Even now we have machines where we are unable to reproduce this (the machines we happen to test on) -- I am not sure why it triggers in some places and not others (despite same versions of firefox/gtk3/xulrunner).

In any event, we have removed the GTK dependency completely, so the above build should work with all browsers available in Fedora. Please try it out and add karma. Thanks!

I confirm that the icedtea-web-1.3.1-3.fc18 fixes the issue for me.

icedtea-web-1.3.1-3.fc18 has been pushed to the Fedora 18 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.