Copy Paste problem from Firefox, not sure where the problem lies

pwhiteside · September 24, 2020, 7:05am

I have an occasional problem with copy and paste from Firefox. It’s occasional as a restart of Firefox solves it. Perhaps coincidentally I am unable to detach tabs with the mouse in the same scenario, requiring a restart of Firefox. These problems start at the same time, and the same restart of Firefox solves them for a while. So I’m thinking it’s either a Firefox problem, or more of a system/wayland problem.

When I copy text from Firefox into another app it simply doesn’t work, no pasting, not even previously copied text. For some such as VSCodium it freezes and completely crashes. Having installed a clipboard manager I can see that no new entry is added. If when VSCodium is frozen I copy text from a non-Firefox window it unfreezes and lets me paste the newly copied text.

I had no idea of anything until I noticed when pasting into Terminator this message. This comes up after a short freeze period.

bracketed-paste-magic:zle:47: not enough arguments for -U

I have no idea where this problem originates from, so don’t know which forums/projects to start reporting/asking about this. A challenge is that I can’t reproduce the issue directly, just after a short while of use I’ll notice I can’t copy text out and I can’t pull windows off (have to just shortcut v + w on tab right click).

This has persisted across many versions of Firefox and VSCodium (also affected VSCode and FOSS-VSCode). My current versions are:

➜  ~ cat /etc/os-release 
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="32.20200920.0 (Silverblue)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=32
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f32"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 32.20200920.0 (Silverblue)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:32"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Silverblue"
VARIANT_ID=silverblue
OSTREE_VERSION='32.20200920.0'
➜  ~ firefox -v
Mozilla Firefox 80.0.1
➜  ~ terminator -v
terminator 1.92
➜  ~ flatpak list | grep vscodium
VSCodium	com.vscodium.codium	1.49.0	stable	flathub	system
➜  ~

jpbn · September 24, 2020, 2:12pm

Is this a Firefox problem?

pwhiteside · September 25, 2020, 5:49am

I honestly don’t know, perhaps, that’s what I’m asking. It appears to be isolated to Firefox, or is it a clipboard problem in Gnome?

I don’t know how that copy process is handled, that is my ask to help try narrow down where the problem is, and I then go to that project with a report description.

jpbn · September 25, 2020, 7:07am

When you copy from a .txt or a .doc or … do you see the same problem? If yes, look inrto the copy-process, if no it is Firefox.

zapateo · September 25, 2020, 12:50pm

I’m experiencing the same issue with VS Codium and Firefox.

NAME=Fedora
VERSION="32 (Workstation Edition)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=32
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f32"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 32 (Workstation Edition)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:32"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f32/system-administrators-guide/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation

Packages versions:

Gnome Shell: gnome-shell-3.36.6-1.fc32.x86_64
Firefox: firefox-81.0-3.fc32.x86_64
VS Code: codium-1.49.2-1600994350.el7.x86_64

sweenu · September 25, 2020, 4:58pm

I have the same problem on Arch linux using wayland and the firefox compiled for fedora (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fedora-firefox-wayland-bin/).
I can still detach tabs with the mouse though . But trying to copy something for the browser to my terminal (alacritty) just makes the terminal freeze.

pooch · October 7, 2020, 5:05pm

Experiencing the same issue.

Copy-pasting from Firefox to other program doesn’t work.

However, I’m able to copy-paste from Firefox to Firefox and from other programs into Firefox.

Dragging tabs out of the Firefox window doesn’t work either.

Fedora 32 + Wayland

lrocha · October 23, 2020, 8:29pm

Also the same issue on Fedora 32, can’t copy from firefox and paste it outside firefox, neither dragging tabs out of firefox to create a new window.

jpbn · November 3, 2020, 9:24am

Hi, @Irocha did you update to the latest version of Firefox?
Open Terminal and do:
sudo dnf update --refresh
that will update Firefox (and more)

lrocha · November 3, 2020, 4:59pm

Thanks @jpbn, yeap, in fact just a couple days ago did that and the update fixed the issue, forgot to answer in here. Sorry for that.

yosomono · November 14, 2020, 3:44pm

I’m still experiencing this issue, even after updating to the latest Firefox version (82.0.3). When trying to paste something copied out of Firefox the app freezes (e.g. VS Code, Discord, etc.).

I also noticed another odd problem: When trying to paste something from Firefox into Google Chrome, Chrome doesn’t accept input anymore. It doesn’t freeze, as it’s still possible to create tabs for example, but I can’t type in Chrome anymore. This can be fixed by copying something from another app. As soon as I copy something out of VS Code or GNOME Software for example I can type again.

Is this a Firefox problem?

jpbn · November 15, 2020, 7:16am

Hi @yosomono, it could be caused by a mix of two clipboards. https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-linux.html.