139562 - profile settings gets lost after mozilla close- profiles stored on network drives

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Christian Kneissl]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; T312461)
BuildID:    2002041711

i am working in an windows 2000 environment with roaming profiles. i have 
netscape 4.7 installed on my system. the profile manager fails converting my 
netscape profile with no error message (exit only). i can create a new default 
profile, but the next time i start mozilla, the profile manager comes again and 
my default profile is not here

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. start mozilla
2. create default profile
3. work with mozilla
4. close mozilla
5. start mozilla, default profile is away

Comment 1

[Jeremiah Isom]

I have a similar problem where Mozilla will NOT start unless I go through the
Profile Manager and create a user every time I wish to use Mozilla.  Quick
Launch keeps Mozilla open.  If I use the same profile name every time and I
select the same directory for profiles, I can use the same profile.  Mozilla
just never remembers where that profile was put.

Comment 2

[Jeremiah Isom]

I have a similar problem where Mozilla will NOT start unless I go through the
Profile Manager and create a user every time I wish to use Mozilla.  Quick
Launch keeps Mozilla open.  If I use the same profile name every time and I
select the same directory for profiles, I can use the same profile.  Mozilla
just never remembers where that profile was put. 
This is Windows 2000, and the first time Mozilla has been on this machine,
Netscape has not been installed.  Mozilla 1 RC2 was installed and then 3 was
installed over that in an attempt to fix.  Both have been removed and
reinstalled repeatedly.  (I hope this doesn't dual post this comment to this
bug. :)   )

Comment 3

[Mikko Virkkilä]

Did the profile names by any chance have spaces in them? If they did they might
be related to bug 146646.

Comment 4

[Jeremiah Isom]

The profile names that I have attempted to use are (without the 
quotes) "Default User", "jigo" and "jeremiah".  None of them show up after 
mozilla has been closed and reopened.  Just out of curiosity, i selected 
c:\temp\ as the profile directory instead of c:\program files\mozilla\profiles\ 
so that there were no spaces as in related bug #146646.  This didn't help.

I have recently reinstalled Windows 2000 (professional) freshly.  I still have 
the problem.  In fact, even during the installation, when it launches mozilla i 
just get the splash screen for a split-second and then nothing.

I suppose it is probably related to the way our network is setup.  We have a 
Win2K Server AD and all of our My Documents directories are mapped to a folder 
in our home directories on the server.

I am going to install mozilla on another computer on the network in a bit to 
see if the same problem happens or if it is just me.  I'll try a different 
domain user, as well.

Comment 5

[Jeremiah Isom]

A user with no drive mappings nor My Documents and home directory remapped 
works perfectly.  Changing my user profile to not map the home drive (and 
logging out and logging back in, of course) did not remedy the problem.

My user profile is still not found upon restarting mozilla.

Is there anything in the storage of user profiles or user profile storage that 
is stored in the My Documents directory or references c:\ specifically?

Comment 6

[Jeremiah Isom]

Problem solved for me.  Under my mapped home directory (M:) there is an 
Application Data directory.  I copied the c:\Application Data\kitchen\Mozilla 
directory (kitchen is the account that worked with no drive mappings) into the 
m:\application data\mozilla directory and this solves the problem.

I guess to solve this for everyone, you'd have to have the installer (or 
profile manager/importer) check and use
"homedrive:/application data/mozilla/profiles" in a remapped home directory 
situation.

If anyone wants to code a fix for it, I can test it under my specific 
circumstances.  I can make all the users I want.  :)

Thanks for listening to my problems through email.

Comment 7

[Patrick Xia]

Does this still happen?

Comment 8

[Matthew Springer]

I am having a similar problem on Linux (RH 7.3).  I was fiddling with the mail
import address utility (which has other issues) and I ended up having to KILL
mozilla. When I relaunched I'd lost all my email settings and all my setup profiles.

  I'm running mozilla locally,but my home directory (~.mozilla) is remote mounted.

Comment 9

[chris barr]

I upgraded to 1.1b (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.1b)
Gecko/20020721) 

5 days later, wham!  
Email settings were GONE.

Using WinME on a White-box 1GHz PC made October 2001
 - Chris Barr

Comment 10

[Grace Bush]

updating summary
changing component, owner

Comment 11

[Michael Lefevre]

reporter (Christian): can you reproduce this bug with a recent build of mozilla
(for example, 1.2.1)? if so, please comment again with details. if not, please
resolve this bug as WORKSFORME. thanks.

(chris barr - note that this bug relates to profiles stored on network drives -
was yours? can you reproduce this with a new build?) 

Comment 12

[Christian Kneissl]

The new Version of Mozilla works, but installing it was not the solution.

I removed the win2k redirection of the "application data" and Mozilla worked. 
(Jeremiah Isom describes a similar situation in his Additional Comment #5 und 6)

So it seems, that Mozilla has a serious problem with folder redirection.

Christian Kneissl

Comment 13

[guanxi]

Confirming.   If it's fixed since comment #12, someone resolve it; I don't have
the facility to test it at the moment.

Comment 14

[Jason J. Thompson]

I was experiencing the same problem on a Windows XP system with roving profiles.
Reading down through the comments for this bug, I was interested to note that
Jeremiah had fixed the problem by copying the Mozilla directory found under an
Application Data directory. Searching my networked home drive (u:) and local
drive I was unable to find anywhere that Mozilla had such a directory. 

As an experiment, I created a "Mozilla" directory within my "U:\Application
Data" directory. The problem was then solved. 

It appears that Mozilla is unable to create the directory, but is able to write
to it; though I am completely confused as to why this should happen. 

I experienced this problem with Mozilla 1.02, 1.2.1, 1.3b, and 1.4a. The build
I'm using currently labels itself as 2003031204. I've only tried this solution
with that build. 

Comment 15

[Byron Peterson]

This also happens on Mac OS X using Network Home Directories.  It happens with all version of 
mozilla browsers on OS X (Mozilla, Netscape, Firebird, and Comino).  The users profile just 
disappears.  I am in education and several of our schools are starting to migrate to network home 
directories and we are having to steer them away from Mozilla based browsers because of this 
problem.

Comment 17

[Andrew Hagen]

Is this still a problem on current trunk builds, or can we close it? Thanks.

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Everyone here is gone (based on no response to PMs in august 09) and Bug 358800's reporter address is dead.  But before closing, you might look at bug   	    101953 and also see whether there are any obvious dupes.

Comment 19

[Christian Kneissl]

I do not have the environment to check the situation with te actual builds.
For my opinion you can close it, but maybe we have to wait what the others here say.