Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Fatal Gtk-ERROR with "Create Folder" feature on Ethereal v0.1

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From: Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 07:30:19 +0200
Jim Young wrote:

Hello,

I am able to reliably reproduce the following fatal Gtk-ERROR message on Ethereal Version v0.10.7 (prerelease 20041008105506):
Error

Gtk-ERROR **: file gtkfilechooserdefault.c: line 1558
(queue_edited_idle): assertion failed: (!impl->edited_new_text)
aborting...

[OK]

Here's how to trigger the error (at least on my Windows XP systems)...

 1. Open an existing trace file (or capture some new data).

 2. Select the menu item: File -> Save As...
     This will open the "Ethereal: Save Capture File As" dialog.

 3. Click on the "Browse for other folders" item.
This will expand the Save as dialog to include some additional buttons and items.

 4. Click on the "Create Folder" button.
      This will create a new item at the top of the Name/Modified
      list with the text "Type name of new folder".

 5. Click on the icon to the left of the "Type name of new folder".
      This will cause the assertion error reported above.

This was running on a Windows XP SP1 build 2600 with:
 GTK+ 2.4.10
 GLib 2.4.5
 WinPcap (3.0.1 alpha)
 libz 1.2.1
 libprce 4.4
 Net-SNMP 5.1
 ADNS
Back on August 18th I reported the same problem with Ethereal 0.10.6 but at that time I was unable to determine what I was doing to trigger the error. The sequence documented above will reproduce the same error v0.10.6 (on Windows XP).
I can reproduce this on my machine too.

A new GTK2.4.11 is out, which might fix this. I will have a try, once the win32 versions are out (which may take a few days).

This dialog is completely GTK specific and the feature causing the crash isn't implemented inside Ethereal's code so we can't do anything against it. You might place a bug report to the win32 port of the GTK libs at: http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/

FWIW:  Here is some additional observations about the way the
Ethereal "Create Folder" feature works (if you avoid generating the error).

Unlike Window's File Manager (which immediately creates a
a folder called "New Folder" when one selects the "File -> New -> Folder" menu item, Ethereal's "Create Folder"
button, does NOT in fact immediately create the new folder.
Instead a new (placeholder) item is added to top of the list of file names and folders of in the current directory. Similar to the way Windows File Manager works, so that one will change the name of the potential new folder from the default of "Type name of new folder" to something move useful, Ethereal's "Create Folder" button will move the keyboard focus into the potential new folder's "Name" field.
Unlike in Windows where the new folder was already created
with the name "New Folder", Ethereal will not create the folder
until one clicks on some other item in the Save As dialog, or
if the focus is moved to another application (for example by clicking on another program in the task bar). Once this focus shift occurs the new folder will then be created (with what ever name was in the Name field) AND Ethereal's save directory will have changed into this new folder.
If there already is a directory with the same name as the new
folder when the dialog actually attempts to actually create the directory you will be presented with the recoverable Error message "Could not create folder....File exists". This behavior is again different (I'm not saying better or worse) than Window's File Manager behavior which appends a suffix (i.e. (2), (3), etc) to the "New Folder" name to avoid any name collisions.

First of all, it's A VERY BAD IDEA to put two only loosely related things into one mail. If someone responds to the last part of your mail, the subject will be very misleading. So use two mails if you want to say something like this.

Second, the GTK dialogs are no windows dialogs as Guy already noted, and they are not intended to be.

Regards, ULFL