272983 - Local directories created when Firefox run from removable media with -profile

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[John T. Haller (email is bugzilla2@)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When running Firefox from a removable drive with its own seld-contained profile,
Firefox still creates %userprofile%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox within the
local filesystem with the pluginreg.dat file and a talkback directory if Firefox
is not installed locally.  This does not seem to be the correct behavior.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have Firefox installed on a removable USB key with a profile included
2. Run it on a PC without Firefox installed using the -profile switch


Actual Results:  
The above-mentioned directories and file are created

Expected Results:  
The local drive should be unaffacted

This bug is important to the Portable Firefox project.  If the above behavior is
desired for other reasons, then perhaps a commandline switch that would prevent
it could be provided.

http://portablefirefox.mozdev.org/

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I'm sure this has been reported before. Basically, we don't "support" the
USB-profile solution yet, although I would like to for 1.1.

Comment 2

[John T. Haller (email is bugzilla2@)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I'm sure this has been reported before. Basically, we don't "support" the
> USB-profile solution yet, although I would like to for 1.1.

I searched more than once and found no mention of it.  Only 3 bugs contain any
mention of pluginreg.dat and none apply here.  We've known of the issue for some
time but decided to finally mention it in bugzilla.

Also, despite the USB-profile solution not being supported, it works quite fine.
 The only thing that needs to be adjusted is extensions, for which there is a
launcher that handles it for Portable Firefox.

Comment 3

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

This is a duplicate of bug #247427

Comment 4

[Peter Kupfer]

This is really a duplicate if the listed bug. That bug, 247427, says that they 
are being place in the wrong directory on the local drive. This bug doesn't 
want any file placed on the local drive.

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

This isn't a blocker, but its a nice-to-have.

Comment 6

[Andrian Cucu]

fixing this bug would enable distributing xul applications or html presentations runable directly from a CD.

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 17 votes.
:mossop, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 8

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.