Thunderbird Update to 91.4.1 breaks Connection to Onion Services

Support
1

Hi,
after the last update witch upgrades thunderbird from 78.14.0 to thunderbird 91.4.1 thunderbird “failed to connect” to onionservices.
downgrading thunderbird to 78.14.0 with
apt install thunderbird="1:78.14.0-1~deb11u1"
solved the issue but the old profile is not usable anymore. I verified the Issue on 2 different Qubes installations, tryed 2 different onionservices.
OS: Qubes 4.0
Template: whonix-16-ws

Console Log where I try to configure a account in an empty profile with a onionservice as server :

13:36:07.581 Unexpected event profile-after-change URLQueryStrippingListService.jsm:224
    observe resource://gre/modules/URLQueryStrippingListService.jsm:224
13:36:10.625 Successfully loaded OpenPGP library librnp.so version 0.15.2+git20210806.dd923a4e.MZLA from /usr/lib/thunderbird/librnp.so RNPLib.jsm:92:15
13:36:10.863 Found 0 public keys and 0 secret keys (0 protected, 0 unprotected) RNPLib.jsm:288:15
13:36:10.899 Trying to load /usr/lib/thunderbird/libotr.so OTRLib.jsm:64:11
13:36:10.900 Trying to load libotr.so from system's standard library locations OTRLib.jsm:64:11
13:36:10.900 Trying to load libotr.so.5 from system's standard library locations OTRLib.jsm:64:11
13:36:10.903 Successfully loaded OTR library libotr.so.5 from system's standard library locations OTRLib.jsm:72:13
13:36:11.715 Unknown Collection "thunderbird/query-stripping" RemoteSettingsClient.jsm:160
    UnknownCollectionError resource://services-settings/RemoteSettingsClient.jsm:160
    sync resource://services-settings/RemoteSettingsClient.jsm:501
    InterpretGeneratorResume self-hosted:1482
    AsyncFunctionNext self-hosted:692
13:36:17.958 NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIURI.host] LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
    startSearch resource://gre/modules/LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
13:36:18.240 NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIURI.host] LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
    startSearch resource://gre/modules/LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
13:36:18.384 NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIURI.host] LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
    startSearch resource://gre/modules/LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
13:36:18.573 NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIURI.host] LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
13:36:18.632 NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIURI.host] LoginAutoComplete.jsm:536
13:37:26.617 Calendar: loadCalendarComponent was called more than once for a single window calendar-chrome-startup.js:38
2

Just a short in the dark:

Thunderbird → Edit → Preferences → scroll down → Config Editor → search for network.dns.blockDotOnion → set to false

The extend of which Whonix has done modifications:

1 Like
3

Fyi, this Thunderbird update reset a lot of the default Whonix config preferences. Among others, telemetry is re-enabled, so everyone double-check your setup.

As for onion addresses, in addition to Patrick’s advice above, I like to change:
network.dnsCacheEntries–>0
network.dnsCacheExpiration–>0

4

Woa this worked for me ! Thanks for the fast help

5

Thunderbird undoing pre-configured settings is pretty bad.

Is there any way we can make sure this doesn’t happen again? Some apt hook that re-applies the Whonix config every update perhaps?

I can probably invent a hook (dpkg trigger) but I wouldn’t know what action hook should apply.

Our current implementation uses the proper API already. It drops configuration files into folder /etc/thunderbird.

Now Thunderbird ignoring these on update is the problem. Seems to be Debian bugs:

1 Like
6

The hook would run sudo apt-get install --reinstall for config packages to protect them from themselves. I think that is a more robust way to guarantee custom settings remain in place whether the programs are buggy or not.

7

apt / dpkg cannot be run during apt / dpkg. But let’s suppose such a hook was possible.

I don’t see how package re-installation would have helped here. The package ships files some files.

  • /etc/thunderbird/pref/30_whonix.js
  • /etc/thunderbird/pref/40_thunderbird.js
  • /etc/thunderbird/profile/chrome/userChrome.css

These files do not conflict with the thunderbird packager or any other package. Meaning, nobody else is attempting to overwrite / modify with these files. These config snippets have been properly in place all the time. A package re-install would have had no effect whatsoever.

What did not happen: the thunderbird package overwriting any files dropped by anon-apps-config.

8

I guess Thunderbird refusing to interpret it’s own configs is an upstream bug that only they can fix.

1 Like