Opening a URL wipes Firefox settings

[iONinja]

Hi there,

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 with Firefox 54.0 (64-bit). I used openurl to open a URL in Firefox, and then closed the browser.

Incidentally, I got these errors in the terminal (after closing the browser window):

Error: 
(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(firefox:5945): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

    at Socket.<anonymous> (/home/luke/io1/node_modules/openurl/openurl.js:35:25)
    at emitNone (events.js:91:20)
    at Socket.emit (events.js:185:7)
    at endReadableNT (_stream_readable.js:974:12)
    at _combinedTickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:80:11)
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:104:9)

But that's not the main issue. When I opened Firefox, it forgot all my settings, theme, etc. Although, it remembered by account and history.

So what's going on here?

[rauschma]

I don’t know! openurl does very little, so it’s almost certainly a Firefox bug.

[iONinja]

@rauschma

Yeah, it also happens with opn and when using exec from child_process. The same issue seems to occur with Google Chrome, as well.