"A copy of Firefox is already open. Only one copy of Firefox can be open at a time." using mulitple logins
We use some dumb terminals to log multiple users onto a Windows Server machine. All the terminals login using the same account (and profile). However only one of the logins is able to use Firefox, everyone else gets the message saying its already open. We don't have any issues with IE, but... its IE... ugh.
Is there a way around this? I understand a lock file is created in the profile (which would then apply to all users logged in on that account). Is there a way to make them unique in some way? Please don't suggest we have to change browsers :(
All Replies (4)
I've called the big guys to help you. Good luck.
Why not create a separate profile on the computer for each user?
You can also create many profiles under one computer profile. Create the profile, then give one user access to that one profile. Note: I do not know the the latter will work as you want it to. Create a Master Profile, then copy it under a different profile name.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles Windows: 32-bit C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe -p 64-bit C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe -p Mac: Navigate to /Applications/Utilities. Open the Terminal application. In the Terminal application, enter the following: /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -p Linux: In Terminal run: firefox –P For users who have one or more builds from mozilla.org this will not work. It would be best to have the full path so if you had placed the untared contents in a folder in /home it would be /home/<username>/foldername/firefox/firefox –P An easy way would be not to do it in a terminal but in say a launcher since you have to point it to the firefox script in Firefox folder you can then add –P on end. You can also have the exact "profilename" after the -P so Firefox will start with that Profile.
Look on your desktop. Do you see a folder called; Old Firefox?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
Those are pretty tricky solutions in our environment. We have about 250 terminals in our shop, with decent turnover. Sometimes we even have one operator using 3 computer terminals at 3 different CNCs at once.
Right now all the terminals login as 'shopuser'. I could create 250 unique accounts using an AD PowerShell script, but the terminals we're using all have to be configured manually. So I'd either have to have configure each one, or label machines so we don't have a welder and a lathe operator both logging in as shopuser171 by mistake.
I think the Firefox profile manager has a similar problem, just too many for those guys to choose from, and I didn't see an easy way to script that many profiles.
Sucks. I like Firefox, but I can't commit that kinda time for that.
Open to other ideas, but I might have to just try Chrome for now to see if that works.
Firefox profiles work as such that only one user can use a specific profile at the same time. You could create a temporary profile folder each time Firefox gets started by launching Firefox via a script (.cmd or .bat) and remove this folder when Firefox is closed to cleanup the disk space.
You can initialize a profile by creating a browser\defaults\profile folder in the Firefox program folder (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\) and place files like a user.js or a bookmarks.html file in it.
You can create a defaults\preferences folder to initialize prefs.