Unable to open links clicked in other applications - seems linked to mesa-2404 failed upgrade

[ubuntuforums-a]

Ubuntu Version:
Example: 24.04 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
Example: GNOME

Problem Description:
When I click on website links in other application - such as Zoom chat or CTRL+Right click on links in terminal, I get a popup window that says (see attached screenshot):

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To use Firefox, you must first close the existing
Firefox process, restart your device, or use a different profile

Relevant System Information:
Irrelevant as this was working prior to failed mesa-2404. I had to revert mesa-2404 to get the browser to even start based on earlier report somewhere in this forums.

Screenshots or Error Messages

What I’ve Tried:
If I close the browser instance then click the link, it opens the browser with the current tab being what I expected from the clicked link. However, if I click the link again, it repeats the error message above.

I’ll also mention that mesa-2404 snap upgrade is still showing as running:
$ > snap changes | grep mesa-2404
2512 Done today at 00:33 AEST today at 00:33 AEST Auto-refresh snap “mesa-2404”
2513 Done today at 00:33 AEST today at 00:33 AEST Running service command for snap “mesa-2404”
2515 Done today at 11:37 AEST today at 11:37 AEST Revert “mesa-2404” snap

If I try to abort that running instance, I get:
$ > sudo snap abort 2513
error: cannot abort change 2513 with nothing pending

I guess that’s because I already reverted but it could have been left in a bad state.

[peterwhite23]

Looks like an issue with Firefox’s remote control. Perhaps try opening a URL from the terminal:

firefox https://ubuntu.com

If that also fails, try creating a fresh profile:

firefox -P

That should bring up the old^[1] profile manager; make sure to uncheck “Use the selected profile without asking at startup”. Create the profile, start it and try firefox https://ubuntu.com a couple of times from another terminal. Since the --no-remote option was not set, the new profile should now be the owner of the remote connection. If that works, it’s probably something to do with your profile or Firefox’s handling thereof.
It only just recently had a major change to its profile management. I don’t know the exact version off hand and haven’t tried it yet, but that sounds like a more plausible explanation than something related to Mesa.

You could also try to revert the Firefox snap.

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BTW, your console output got line-wrapped. It’s better to use code blocks; click </> on an empty line and paste into the new element.

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1. see below ↩︎

[ubuntuforums-a]

Interestingly, I did use </> - but that was after pasting the text and then highlighting it and clicking the </> button.

Anyway, I discovered that installing dbus-x11 resolved this link issue. But shouldn’t this dbus-x11 have been installed as part of the OS install??? If so, how did it get uninstalled? I check /var/log/apt/history.log and did not see mention of the package.

There be gremlins in the OS.

[ubuntuforums-a]

Seem like that dbus-x11 package install was short lived or probably completely unrelated and that there’s an intermittent problem as it has returned.

I think I’ll bite the bullet and migrate to 26.04. But in the meantime, I’ve installed the flatpak version of Firefox which doesn’t exhibit the link issue.