Bug 17538

Summary:	calls mailx from Firefox in a bad way
Product:	Branch 4.0	Reporter:	Ivan Zakharyaschev <imz>
Component:	url_handler	Assignee:	Dmitry V. Levin <ldv>
Status:	CLOSED FIXED	QA Contact:	Q.A. 4.0 <qa-4.0>
Severity:	critical
Priority:	P2	CC:	kharpost
Version:	4.0
Hardware:	all
OS:	Linux

Description Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-12 23:53:48 MSD

url_handler-0.3.0-alt1

In Lite 4.0.3, if you press on a "mailto" link in Firefox, an undesirable thing happens: (only the last handler is available, it's mailx) mailx is not run in a terminal, so it has no input, and as a result, it even not merely fails, but rather sends some message (empty? or whatever -- that's not important) without your consent to send it.

Probably, that's either because the specification

'/usr/bin/mailx --':VT

in /etc/urlview/url_handlers has un unsuitable mode (VT: Launch in the same terminal) or because the VT mode is not handled correctly in the script (it shouldn't be started if there is no interactive input).

The latter thing must be fixed: a VT program shouldn't be run with no interactive input: so either it should forcibly run in an xterm in such case, or it should simply fail.

As for the first thing, I don't know whether XT would indeed be a better mode for mailx.

Comment 1 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-13 00:45:54 MSD

What happens:

$ mailx -v -- imz < /dev/null
No message, no subject; hope that's ok
Mail Delivery Status Report will be mailed to <imz>.
$

Comment 2 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-13 00:49:30 MSD

One more possible workaround/solution/enhancement: call mailx in url_handlers in a forced interactive mode; then it will fail in such cases:

$ mailx -v -I -- imz < /dev/null
mailx: tcgetattr: Inappropriate ioctl for device
$ 

But that won't solve the problem of sending mail from Firefox when no other mailers are available. So, there is still need for some modification, such that xterm will be used in such cases.

Comment 3 Ivan Zakharyaschev 2008-10-18 20:00:11 MSD

<a href="mailto:imz@example.com">An example link</a> to press in Firefox (which generates an empty message).

Another way to reproduce: right click, and "Send" in the menu. It generates an empty message to nowhere. (See postfix logs.)

Comment 4 Repository Robot 2010-11-24 05:14:43 MSK

url_handler-0.3.1-alt1 -> sisyphus:

* Wed Nov 24 2010 Dmitry V. Levin <ldv@altlinux> 0.3.1-alt1
- url_handler.sh: added "mailto" type autodetection (closes: #24627).
- url_handlers: changed mailx mode to XT (closes: #17538).
- url_handler.sh: treat BROWSER and MAILER environment variables as
  colon-separated lists without necessary full path (closes: #3482).