147455 - Program crash mangles profile; profile unusable thereafter

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[bartholomewb]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC; en-US; rv:1.0rc3) Gecko/20020523
BuildID:    2002052305

(Talkback Incident ID TB6662998G) Program Crash in Mozilla RC3.
(Talkback Incident ID TB6662998G) "Unknown Exit"in Mozilla RC3.
(Talkback Incident ID TB6685081Z) "Unknown Exit"in Netscape 6.

After the program crash listed above, trying to start Mozilla (or Netscape 6)
using the same profile caused the computer to hang indefinitely (the
stalled-wristwatch cursor). Force-quit didn't work; I had to perform a hard
restart of the computer to back out of the problem (thus the Unknown Exits). I'm
currently using a different profile in Mozilla RC3.

The profiles were migrated from NN4.78 some time ago to NN6. They are still
accessible in NN4.78.

I don't know the specific cause of the program crash. I was dragging the cursor
across the Go menu, it popped open with a greyed-out list of indecipherable
gibberish, and Mozilla crashed. When I tried to start it up again using the same
profile, my computer hung completely in both Mozilla RC3 and Netscape 6.

The affected profile (and its Bookmarks, passwords, etc.) is currently
inaccessible from within Mozilla and Netscape.
   
   

Reproducible: Didn't try
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Crash the program in some way or other
2.Start up the program again, using the same profile
3.Watch the program try to load forever

Actual Results:  As described above, the program hung on startup, requiring me
to perform a hard restart of the system.

Expected Results:  If Mozilla needed to crash, it shouldn't have taken my
avility to use that profile with it when it died.

Mac OS 9.2.2
G4 450 
640 MB RAM

Comment 1

[Arthur]

The release notes say that you shouldn't use the same profile with NN6 and
mozilla 1.0 RC3. They're much to different now. That could be the cause of the
crashes.

Comment 2

[bartholomewb]

Arthur, I dont think that's what the release notes say. They warn not to rename a 
profile using the same name that was assigned to some previous profile. 

I didn't do that. The Installer lifted previously named profiles from wherever 
they are stored and when I opened RC3, there they were in the profile dialog, 
ready to go.

The profile that went wonky worked fine until the program crash; a profile that 
wasn't being used at the time still works: the program opens and operates fine.

Comment 3

[Arthur]

Somehow I still suspect that this could have been the problem. Can you copy your
damaged profile into a new one and try deleting files until it gets working
again to see where the corruption occured?

Some sort of profile integrity checking tool really would be cool. Probably
automagically run every time a crash occurs...

The part of the release notes I've refered to was:

****
Preferences

Do not share a profile between Netscape and Mozilla builds. Doing this can lead
to unpredictable results, some of which may include loss of Search settings and
preferences and unchecked growth of the Bookmarks file (large enough to freeze
your system). It is best to create a new profile for each or manually copy (and
change the name) an existing profile. (Bug 137164) 
****
Not very easy to find I must admit.

Comment 4

[Greg K.]

Could well be a dup of bug 137164. Adding qawanted/DUPEME.

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

OS classic builds are dead