147344 - Breaking up the profile for roaming, sharing and performance

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, enhancement)

Description

[Chris Lee]

The profile at present stores a lot of data in files that need to be split and
made into logical units.

Example requirement:
I have a notebook PC, I use it at home at work and on the road. I have different
network settings at each location and as such have a requirement for proxy
settings to be different for each profile.
I however want my profile for home and the raod to use my ISP based profile and
link in my bookmarks from the work shared profile.
At work I want the work profile to use the network based profile which my
company has insisted stores my cookies localy, my mail in my home directory and
my bookmarks in a roaming capable location.

This will need to be thought about from more perspectives along with the fact
that the profile manager needs to allow the user to select where to store each
part of the profile.

I Searched for related bugs and came up with bug #17048 and bug #17917, which it
will affect.

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

True, part of prefs.js is definitely installation-specific (i.e. not roamable),
some is user-specific (i.e. should roam). Dunno, how 4.x solved that (did it?).

Comment 2

[Christopher Whitt]

Also see bug 18043 and very vaguely related is bug 78072.

Comment 3

[Matthew Cline]

Changing OS to "All".

Comment 4

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

-> Future.

Ben, I'm not sure how or if this affects your roaming scheme. If it doesn't,
this could probably be WONTFIXED. I don't see any blockage that's not related to
roaming.

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

For proxies, see bug 43429.

Conrad, this is a tricky question. With the current state (with it, I think,
absolute paths in prefs.js), there is no way to roam prefs.js, with is of course
a bummer for roaming. I knwo there are/were efforts to change that, but then
there are still more or less installation dependant prefs. Proxies, font prefs,
maybe cache size, maybe email accounts. You noticed the "more or less" and
"maybe"s in there, they make it very tricky, they partially even depend on the
user - some user might have the same fonts installed and same mail accounts sat
up on all maschines, another user roams between Windows and Linux (thus fonts
prefs for one system are invalid on another, right?) and doesn't have access to
the ISP's email account on the notebook/at work. So, I don't even know what to do.

Comment 6

[Thomas Meggs]

I say that anything that most likely wouldn't be the same from network to
network shouldn't be in the roaming profile. Some key things that should
probably be included are:

- mail settings
- bookmarks
- perhaps cookies and user login data (from security manager), but that sounds
possibly sticky from a security stand point

If they can't access mail, then oh well. Their place of work should have a less
restrictive firewall. A lot of us can, or at least work around things so that
you can.

Things that shouldnt be included:

- fonts
- proxies

Font settings seem silly to include, since you could potentially be running
Mozilla on so many different kinds of computers with so many different available
fonts, not to even mention different monitor resolutions for font sizes.

Proxies are generally only accessible on internal networks, so what is the point
in keeping a proxy setting if its just going to be different somewhere else.
That adds complexity to it for different proxy configurations as well. And I
sincerely fear a configuration like that given the number of bugs just with the
existing system of having multiple mail servers. Proxy servers seem more complex.

Has there been any discussion as to how roaming profiles would be served? What
kind of infrastructure would it require?

Just my $0.02.

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> - mail settings

Local mail accounts currently don't roam at all, for at least 2 reasons. I tell
people to use IMAP.

> If they can't access mail, then oh well. Their place of work should have a
> less restrictive firewall.

Doesn't have to be the firewall. Germany's biggest ISP doesn't allow POP access
outside their network, referring people to their webmail.

> Proxies are generally only accessible on internal networks, so what is
> the point in keeping a proxy setting if its just going to be different
> somewhere else.

Another wrong assumption ;-). Who says that the different roaming machines are
on different networks, somewhere else? The main usage of roaming is within a
single company network, to switch between desks. People also use it in their
private network at home to jump between different computers. The use of roaming
to jump between sites is existant, but uncommon. This is part of the problem
here. In the former case, you often have a homogeneous environment, while you
often have heterogeneous one in the latter. In a homogeneous environment, you
want more settings to roam than in a heterogeneous environment.

Comment 8

[Matthew Miller]

<I>The use of roaming to jump between sites is existant, but uncommon.</I>

Do you have statistics to back this up? My main use is to sync bookmarks between
work and home and laptop.

Comment 9

[Thomas Meggs]

>> - mail settings

>Local mail accounts currently don't roam at all, for at least 2 reasons. I tell
>people to use IMAP.

I do use IMAP. I have maybe 3 or 4 email accounts which I actively recieve mail
with. They all use IMAP. They have different settings. The defaults in Mozilla
are not generally things that I use. I wasn't saying mail should roam. I was
saying mail settings should roam.

>Doesn't have to be the firewall. Germany's biggest ISP doesn't allow POP access
>outside their network, referring people to their webmail.

My point was just that restricted access to mail servers is almost by random
selection. Just because someone uses Germany's biggest ISP does that mean the
rest of the world shouldn't be able to have roaming mail _settings_? (emphasis
because I am talking about settings to pick up mail, not the mail itself)

>Another wrong assumption ;-). Who says that the different roaming machines are
>on different networks, somewhere else? The main usage of roaming is within a
>single company network, to switch between desks. People also use it in their
>private network at home to jump between different computers. The use of roaming
>to jump between sites is existant, but uncommon. This is part of the problem
>here. In the former case, you often have a homogeneous environment, while you
>often have heterogeneous one in the latter. In a homogeneous environment, you
>want more settings to roam than in a heterogeneous environment.

I actually agree with some of what you say, but I think you are incorrect with
your assertion that most people don't use Mozilla both at work and at home,
therefore they don't matter. In fact, most people I know that use Mozilla use it
at work and at home. So this is the perspective I am coming from.

Just because you spend all your time writing enterprise software doesn't mean 
that everyone is bound by the Enterprise.

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> > The use of roaming to jump between sites is existant, but uncommon.

> Do you have statistics to back this up?

Roaming was originally created for large companies with people switching between
desks, it's a corporate feature. It's a hassle to set up. Additionally, usage
over the Internet is slow. We should support both usages anyways, though.

> I wasn't saying mail should roam. I was saying mail settings should roam.

OK, what do you do with local mail? Doesn't make sense to roam local mail
accounts settings without mails. So, you only want to roam IMAP account settings?

> does that mean the
> rest of the world shouldn't be able to have roaming mail _settings_?

No, this was my point: Different users need different settings to roam.

> therefore they don't matter

Nowhere I have said that they don't matter.

> In fact, most people I know that use Mozilla use it at work and at home

But they don't all use roaming between those sites.

Comment 11

[timeless]

i'd favor splitting this stuff up. especially so that we can easily split the
cache folder out of the profile folder.

part of the changes would involve replacing some preferences that use
nsI(Local)File with new ones that use nsIRelativeFilePref and to add at least a
directoryservice key for localdata (which would be something like
"%userprofile%\local settings" on typical windows 5+ computers - and something
totally different on sysetms where this stuff actually matters).

Comment 13

[Josh Triplett]

Adding dependency on bug 408156, which addresses the prefs aspect of this problem.

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

see Bug 301123 – Custom profile creation should allow for separate profile and cache folder selection

Comment 16

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This bug is filed in a bugzilla component related to pre-Firefox code which no longer exists. I believe it is no longer relevant and I am therefore closing it INCOMPLETE.

If you believe that this bug is still valid and needs to be fixed, please reopen it and move it to the Toolkit:Startup and Profile System product/component.

Comment 17

[sondra.kinsey]

Can someone reopen this feature request? It would still be beneficial to me, and was never implemented to my knowledge.

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

You don't describe what you are looking for that would be beneficial, so I will point out there is a current revision effort in progress in Preferences: Backend included in this list https://mzl.la/2xh5LQQ

I don't have any special insight into these issues, but I suspect this bug should not be reopened given comment 16.