How can I make "The 1Password Extension is ready to go" page go away every time 1Password starts?

effhaa

I can confirm the issues above using the most recent Firefox (50.0.2) and 1Password 6.3.5 - same symptoms as outlined above. Anything I can help debugging this?

AGAlumB

@effhaa: The best thing to do would be to update 1Password first. You're a few versions behind, and we've been making improvements to the browser authentication along the way. Just update the app, remove the extension, restart your Mac, and install a fresh copy of the extension and you should be all set. Let me know how it turns out! :)

mattsch

Hello,

I am running 1Password 6.5.2 on Mac and the latest version of the extension for both Firefox and Safari.

I still have the issue with this extra tab that opens and "looking for 1Password..." quite often. I believe it got better with the latest version of the extension, though, but that's just a feeling.

I just noticed one thing where I can reproduce it consistently. I have two user accounts. One uses Safari and the other Firefox (probably unrelated, but just in case). Whenever I switch the user, the "popup" appears the next time I click the 1Password icon in the browser. I will observe it more whether it still occurs in other instances.

AGAlumB

@mattsch: Ah, interesting! Thanks for mentioning that! Are you running 1Password on each user account too, or just on one? We'll look into this. We've definitely made a concerted effort to help with these sorts of issues in recent extension releases, and there may be more we can do as well.

mattsch

@brenty: I am running it on each user account.

I actually just noticed that it can be reproduced by just putting the user account to sleep and then logging in again. Then, the popup/tab will appear again when trying to use the extension.

Hope this helps tracking it further down.

littlebobbytables

Hi @mattsch,

Would it be accurate to say that in both situations you're trying to access 1Password in Firefox quite promptly after returning to the account?

Take the fast switching scenario. When you switch users 1Password will stop listening for extension when it knows it isn't active. As a full application this is something it can know and by disabling the extension side of things it avoids confusing an extension in another account. The extension can never be this aware, the APIs available simply don't allow for it so it tries to connect to a copy of 1Password that isn't listening any more and after a few attempts it slows down how often it checks - if we didn't we'd cause the browser to hammer out connections attempts that could have an adverse effect. When you switch back to this user account 1Password will start listening again but the extension is almost guaranteed to have slowed all the way down to checking once a minute.

So I believe that you can reliably reproduce the behaviour you see if the very first action upon returning to the user account is to try and use the 1Password extension but if you paused before doing so do you find that it either doesn't happen at all for a sufficiently long enough delay or the reliability of the tab appearing drops and it's not all the time?

We've got something in the latest beta designed to help in one particular scenario (when Firefox is first launched) but this one is a bit trickier and part of that trickiness is because the extension simply can never be aware of whether the account is in the background or not, something that would be very useful for it to know.

nicktech

I've been dealing with this issue of the plugin "successfully installed" tab popping up for many months now.
Tried removing/installing the latest plugin for Firefox with no change.
But I have narrowed it down to an issue with VPN. Basically whenever I leave a network, hop on a new network and enable my work's VPN I will get the successfully installed message again. I can reproduce this behavior consistently. It happens many times a day as I'm often working from different locations.
What I don't understand is why must the plugin always do this callback or check? Why can't it just flip a switch in it's settings saying yes I've displayed the first install screen and that be that!

AGAlumB

@nicktech: Thanks for bringing this up! That seems really strange to me, as I use multiple VPNs myself and don't recall experiencing this issue. Can you give the exact steps you're taking when this occurs? I'll definitely pay closer attention myself in case I was just ignoring it previously.

nicktech

Exact steps:
1. On network 1, Firefox is open, plugin is working fine.
2. Close my laptop, drive to new location and get on network 2 and enable VPN (I have tried with both PPTP and Cisco LT2P).
3. Try to use the plugin in Firefox, get annoying tab telling me the plugin is installed. Close annoying tab for the 5th time that day.

AGAlumB

@nicktech: This is really interesting. Thanks for mentioning it!

2. Close my laptop, drive to new location and get on network 2 and enable VPN (I have tried with both PPTP and Cisco LT2P).

It sounds like this may be the difference in your case, as I'm not prompted again each time I change wireless networks (which is often). I haven't heard of changing networks causing this for anyone else either, but I know folks have encountered other issues specifically with Cisco software. Using a VPN on its own, as mentioned above, shouldn't have any impact on 1Password or your browser, but perhaps the software is doing something else as well. If you switch networks but don't connect to the VPN, does it still happen? Let me know what you find!

mattsch

Hi @littlebobbytables,

Would it be accurate to say that in both situations you're trying to access 1Password in Firefox quite promptly after returning to the account?

Yes, that's right. Didn't think this would be a problem.

So I believe that you can reliably reproduce the behaviour you see if the very first action upon returning to the user account is to try and use the 1Password extension but if you paused before doing so do you find that it either doesn't happen at all for a sufficiently long enough delay or the reliability of the tab appearing drops and it's not all the time?

I observed it in the last couple of weeks for a bit and tried to wait about a minute before trying to access it. If I wait about a minute it does not happen.

Take the fast switching scenario. When you switch users 1Password will stop listening for extension when it knows it isn't active. As a full application this is something it can know and by disabling the extension side of things it avoids confusing an extension in another account. The extension can never be this aware, the APIs available simply don't allow for it so it tries to connect to a copy of 1Password that isn't listening any more and after a few attempts it slows down how often it checks - if we didn't we'd cause the browser to hammer out connections attempts that could have an adverse effect. When you switch back to this user account 1Password will start listening again but the extension is almost guaranteed to have slowed all the way down to checking once a minute.

I understand. But wouldn't it be possible to use a browser/window event like "onFocus"? If it gets out of focus, it doesn't need to listen, if it becomes focused/active it starts (or tries) listening again.

littlebobbytables

Hi @mattsch,

Ideally how fast you want to use 1Password in a browser shouldn't be something you need to worry about, after all it should just work. I'll ask my colleague but my initial thoughts are the onFocus event isn't the route to take. The extension doesn't listen for a connection from 1Password but has to initiate one so the issue is how often should the extension be trying this. At first glance there would seem to be a number of situations that would result in the onFocus event firing. We want the extension to be responsible though and not sit there constantly hammering on a socket.

We are hoping to move away from using a WebSocket completely if we can and based on early experimentation it could make a difference here. Given our various hopes with this it seems the best avenue at the moment.

nicktech

To follow up, because I think we are still not on the same page, I am not using any third party software to connect to my work VPN. Just the built in client in Mac OS. I also find I do not even need to change wireless networks. All I need to to is enable or disable the VPN connection and I get the welcome screen again the next time I use the Firefox addon. To illustrate I created a screencast you can see here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0T1-77Gv62oLTNrUUhKY1AydFU/view?usp=sharing

mattsch

@nicktech: I just tried it out and I can confirm it for Firefox. With Safari it doesn't happen. As soon as the VPN connection changes (connect or disconnect) and I click the icon in Firefox, I get the extra tab with the looking/welcome screen.

@littlebobbytables: Thanks for the insight. I didn't mean to do it all the time a browser event is firing, but if the extension knows it's in "standby mode" and a browser event comes in it could try to re-establish the connection.

littlebobbytables

Hi @nicktech & @mattsch,

It's interesting, I'd never noticed this before but that's because my primary browser is Vivaldi and is based on Chromium. I don't know the underlying reason why but I can have both Vivaldi and Firefox open and watch the logs as Firefox clearly states the connection is disconnected yet Vivaldi shows nothing making this Firefox specific.

I noticed one thing that bothered me a bit and it all of this conversation resulted in the spark of an idea but one that will need a little time to see if it can yield anything.

ref: OPX-1315
ref: OPX-1316

littlebobbytables

Hi @nicktech & @mattsch,

I wonder if you can do me a favour please. We've just released 4.6.3.BETA-2 and it includes some changes based on our conversation here. If you're running the beta can you force Firefox to look for extension updates (there's a Check for Updates menu option when you click on the cog button in the extensions tab) and if you're running the stable could you uninstall the stable version, restart Firefox (caching reasons) and then install the beta using this link, 1Password Browser Extensions. After that can you try anything and everything you can to see if you still see the welcome page pop up. As two of the people suffering this and with a reasonable knowledge of the typical things you do that caused it to appear your observations will be very constructive :smile:

mattsch

Hi @littlebobbytables,

thanks for following up and your work on this. I've followed your steps and have the 4.6.3.BETA-2 installed now.

I did a quick test with connecting/disconnecting to VPN and I don't get the welcome page pop up.

For the other problem with "fast user switching" instead of the welcome screen popping up, after clicking the 1Password button, nothing happens at first. After a while (haven't timed it but feels long, maybe 10s?) the regular pop up requesting the master password appears.

Hope this helps.

littlebobbytables

Hello @mattsch,

Thank you for the prompt response :smile: It's heartening to know it has helped with the VPN and that it seems we've made some sort of difference when it comes to fast user switching. That delay may be tough to reduce though.

The reason why you were seeing the page is because when the extension doesn't have a connection to 1Password it continuously cycles through a list of agreed ports in the hope of receiving a response from 1Password. What was happening with the fast user switching scenario was you were clicking the 1Password browser button before the extension had looped through the port list and located the copy of 1Password that is once again listening for a connection. To try and reduce this impact the extension starts a scan immediately on clicking the extension button if it's in the disconnected state as the first port it checks is the most commonly used one. The theory is if 1Password is listening then it should connect immediately.

So I see one of two possibilities.

1. It's taking 1Password a moment to react and set up the port again. 1Password being a full application can receive events connected to screen locking etc. and so it is reacting to the account being unlocked. I'm not sure we can speed things up here.
2. We're instructing Firefox to open a port but something is delaying the completion of this request. During my testing I did sometimes notice odd delays and I haven't found an explanation that works for me yet.

So reducing the 10s may be tough but if the welcome page isn't opening and the normal mini lock window is eventually appearing that does suggest we've made some kind of improvement.

Please keep me posted if you notice anything else.

nicktech

I am happy to report that the beta release seems to have fixed the welcome screen issue!
I've switched networks and VPNed into work multiple times today without it happening.
Thank you so much!

jxpx777

That's great, @nicktech. This was @littlebobbytables's brain child; he really did a great job on the improvements. So glad it's working for you!

--
Jamie Phelps
Code Wrangler @ AgileBits
Fort Worth, Texas

mattsch

Is it possible the certificate provisining/expiraction problem also affects the browser extensions? This morning I used it and it worked just fine. Now it stopped connecting to 1Password. Even after updating 1Password manually to the latest version and restarting the browser (both Safari and Firefox) it won't connect.

littlebobbytables

Hi @mattsch,

I have seen a couple of instances where restarting the Mac was required. Up until now I've been working under the assumption that many people deleted the extension and installed a fresh copy and that the Mac restart was the kick everything needed to start a fresh authorisation/pairing process. It hasn't happened to the majority of people though so it's always hard to tell with small samples. Can you see if a restart of the Mac makes any difference please.

mattsch

Hi @littlebobbytables,

thanks for getting back so quick. I just noticed that after switching to my other user on the Mac it works there, and after switching back to this one it started working again.

Sorry about the false alarm :)

littlebobbytables

@mattsch, it ended on a positive note so all good :smile: I'm always happy when I get to see a post saying 1Password is working properly.