extension fails on startup, works after toggling off and on in about:addons

General information

• Operating system + version: Regolith (based on Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS)
• Browser + version: Firefox 84.0.2
• Information about the host app:
  • How did you install it? Package manager (apt)
  • If installed an official release, put a version

$ apt-cache show webext-browserpass | grep Version
Version: 3.4.1-3

• Information about the browser extension:
  • How did you install it? From within Firefox from addons.mozilla.org. (edit: sorry, this was a mistake, installed via apt with the package webext-browserpass)
  • Browserpass extension version as reported by your browser: 3.4.1

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Exact steps to reproduce the problem

1. Install and configure browserpass extension and host app.

2. Close and restart Firefox.

What should happen?

The Browserpass icon should show up in the bar, the shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-F, Ctrl-Shift-L) should work.

What happened instead?

The Browserpass icon doesn’t show up on startup of Firefox. The shortcuts don’t work.

The extension is listed as active in about:addons, and it is listed under about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox. When clicking to debug it there, I get an error page detailing TypeError: target is null.

Disabling and re-enabling the extension in about:addons restores the icon, the shortcuts and (it appears) all functionality.

[meskes]

FWIW I doubt this issue relates to browserpass at all. All extensions installed through Debian/Ubuntu packages show the same behavior in firefox. Disabling/re-enabling helps as does killing and restarting firefox. My guess is that the way the extensions are side-loaded causes this issue.

Michael

Michael Meskes Michael at Fam-Meskes dot De Michael at Meskes dot (De|Com|Net|Org) Meskes at (Debian|Postgresql) dot Org

[maximbaz]

Instead of removing the link, I added a note that the package is not to be used because it’s significantly outdated. Let’s close the issue and revisit if we hear that Debian package is up-to-date again 😉