Upgrade from 52 latest version, keeping profile without creating a Firefox account
We have 52.9 ESR deployed to approx 13000 computers. We need to upgrade those installs to the latest version and now when you install Firefox (ESR or not) it tells you that you can't use your current profile and must first create a Firefox account to sync your stuff to get it into the new versions. That's unacceptable in the real world where user's don't have privileges to install software and software is controlled by the enterprise using tools like SCCM. Is there any way to simply silently install Firefox 71 and use the existing profile? Or is there some kind of command-line profile conversion or import tool for this?
All Replies (8)
hi, could you provide the exact wording of the error message you're seeing?
it sounds a bit like the change from Dedicated profiles per Firefox installation is at play here, but that shouldn't kick in as long as the installation folder of firefox is staying the same...
philipp said
hi, could you provide the exact wording of the error message you're seeing? it sounds a bit like the change from Dedicated profiles per Firefox installation is at play here, but that shouldn't kick in as long as the installation folder of firefox is staying the same...
Hey philipp... thanks. I added a screen shot. It's warning about the updated version having a new profile. I thought this was related to some change in method Firefox is using to store everything and it is no longer compatible with previous version profiles.
ok thanks, so this indeed related to the new dedicated profile per installation path feature. the article Understanding in depth the profile per installation feature goes into some detail here, but the tl;dr is that you can go back to the old behaviour by setting the environment variable MOZ_LEGACY_PROFILES=1 on affected systems.
Let me try MOZ_LEGACY_PROFILES and I'll let you know. Is there a registry equivalent to this though? Adding an env variable usually needs a reboot for it to register. I saw a mention of "Software\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox\LegacyProfiles", but only once and no verification on that.
yes, you're right - it can also be set via GPO: https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/README.md#legacyprofiles
This worked well for me thanks! I've been looking for a while now and couldn't find anything. I'm going to go ahead with the GPO solution you provided to get through this upgrade roll-out. Thanks again!
Curious why you would be going from the ESR version to a standard Release version?
In an Enterprise environment I would think that an ESR version might be better for your users, an extension of what they would be used to using. The latest ESR version is Firefox 68.3.0, which was came out the same day as Firefox71.0 which typically has changes and new features with every new Release vs. the ESR version which limits changes and new features to every 8th (or so) version.
I didnt word my post well. We are sticking with ESR...just noticed in testing that both ESR and standard behave the same way with the profile changes. Just threw out 71 as an upgrade example. Thanks for the reply though.