147869 - Multiple instances of Mozilla can't share a profile

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 147160

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Robert Montante]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0rc3) Gecko/20020523
BuildID:    2002052309

If I start up a mozilla process, and then attempt to start up a second separate
process, the second process dumps me in the profile creation dialog box.  If I
try to reuse my current profile, I get the error message that the profile is in use.

This behavior was not the case in previous builds; is it now intentional?

I find it convenient and desirable to start separate processes, rather  than
always spawning new windows as children of the current process.  For example, I
have a (KDE) gui icon that starts "/usr/local/mozilla/mozilla" and another icon
that starts "/usr/local/mozilla/mozilla -mail".  (I checked, and the same
profile conflict occurs if I execute these two commands from a shell command line.)

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Execute "${mozilla-path}/mozilla -mail"
2.Execute "${mozilla-path}/mozilla"
3.Attempt to reuse a profile (such as "default")

Actual Results:  I was told that I couldn't use the profile because it was in
use, and sent back to create a brand new one.

Expected Results:  Not go on to step 3 above, but just used the profile again.

grumble grumble grumble

Comment 1

[K'Trina Medina]

Dupe of bug 147812 or bug 147160?

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Yes.

The new behavior is intentional because the old behavior led to dataloss and 
profile corruption if both instances wrote to the profile.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 147160 ***

Comment 3

[K'Trina Medina]

Verified as a dupe of bug 147160

Comment 4

[Robert Montante]

Yes, I found the previous reports (sorry to clutter things up).

Still, couldn't the profile be reused in "read-only mode" somehow?
It seems I'm not the only one who finds it useful to start multiple
processes.  This new approach is not satisfactory.