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Profile template and interaction between profiles

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  • Last reply by kayceegb

kayceegb
kayceegb
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Hello,

I have a profile I made changes on and installed desired addons. I use it as a template.

When starting firefox, I copy the template to a new directory and use this directory as a profile path used for firefox. It works ok but I see some glitches.

A first one is that at start time, I see access to some files and directories located in template's directory. A second one, is when I start a second instance of firefox, the zoom level specified in the template is not applied to second instance and the option in preferences is not visible in the second instance. Both are ok in the first instance. I have not this problem when running 2 profiles created by profile manager. And a third one, is that I suspect that when using the second instance, the browser cache(s), is/are not freed when closing the second instance. They are when closing the first one. I have to investigated more on this one.

The point that puzzles me the most is the second.

Does any one have an idea what's happening here and what I could do to correct those points ?

Thanks in advance K.

Hello, I have a profile I made changes on and installed desired addons. I use it as a template. When starting firefox, I copy the template to a new directory and use this directory as a profile path used for firefox. It works ok but I see some glitches. A first one is that at start time, I see access to some files and directories located in template's directory. A second one, is when I start a second instance of firefox, the zoom level specified in the template is not applied to second instance and the option in preferences is not visible in the second instance. Both are ok in the first instance. I have not this problem when running 2 profiles created by profile manager. And a third one, is that I suspect that when using the second instance, the browser cache(s), is/are not freed when closing the second instance. They are when closing the first one. I have to investigated more on this one. The point that puzzles me the most is the second. Does any one have an idea what's happening here and what I could do to correct those points ? Thanks in advance K.

All Replies (2)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Are you creating the files in the default location (usually ~/.mozilla) or elsewhere as in case of the latter there is no secondary location used (i.e. files and folders (disk cache) are in the same folder)?

Some files in the profile folder contain absolute references to files, so copying the full profile folder content transfers the files, but not the links. Using the Profile Manager creates a fresh profile with no references to other profiles. It is possible that Firefox locks some files (mutex) for access otherwise. Best is usually to only copy/transfer data files that are safe to copy. You can check files like prefs.js and pkcs11.txt.

kayceegb
kayceegb Question owner
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Hello,

The profile is copied outside of default ~/.mozilla folder (actually a tmpfs) but the script manages also the creation of a cache folder for the new profile in ~/.cache/mozilla/..., which is used by the respective profile when firefox is running. I have to dig more about this. Absolute references is what I am affraid of.

About the zoom glitch, new ideas came to my mind after I posted the question and I think I found the culprit. Zoom preferences are stored in a sqlite database. Firefox 62+ have exclusive access to sqlite databases. In my workflow I had some shared files between profiles before this version, which already made me some trouble with bookmarks. When I give firefox access to a copy of content-prefs.sqlite and not the shared one, that seems to make the problem disappear. Global zoom preference is respected, per site preferences too and indication in url bar is ok.

I have to look further for a clean profile template which integrates firefox preferences, installed addons and their preferences and data/cache for addons (prefs.js does not seems to integrate all that), that would maybe prevent all sort of glitches (last one I found, is limited functionality in second instance for at least one addon).

K.

Modified by kayceegb