Sometimes, textbox.focus() doesn't seem do the right thing, and the subsequent synthesizeKey call sends the event somewhere else. This never seems to be a problem on Windows and OS X. Examples for this are bug 477631 and bug 494905.

Bug 497839 comment 11 is related to the issue of whether synthesizeKey should send events to inactive windows. It looks like this bug existed before bug 178324 landed, but perhaps even at that time the effect of synthesizeKey sometimes depended on whether the window was active?

CCing Neil Deakin to see if he has some idea about how to solve this problem.

Sorry i've yet realized that it's not console2. My workaround - create xul panel withiout noautohide attribute, and then everything works fine

Is this bug intended to be a vague general issue about tests failing on linux, or a specific issue?

AFAIR if the window is inactive at the time (and thus requiring a focus) the textbox.focus() would call focus() on the window as well which is async. Then again, my memory may just be playing with me...