150453 - Possibility to change/set profile path

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, enhancement)

Description

[Fredrik Aminoff]

I would like the possibility to set the path to the profile to something else
than the default under Win32.
A registry-entry, a environmental variable or a command-line option would be nice.

We have mandatory WinNT-profiles and thousands of users and it would be nice to
be able to set the profilepath to something like:
H:\.mozilla
And there mozilla would create the [random string].slt folder.

Comment 1

[gavin long]

When creating a new profile, you already can.  On about the second screen in,
there's a "change folder..." button, which lets you choose where to put the
files for the profile you are creating.  Or are you asking for something else?

Comment 2

[Fredrik Aminoff]

Yes i know you can change the profile path.

The problem is that that information is stored inside registry.dat and that file
is stored inside the profile (c:\documents and settings\username etc). This adds
to the complexity. One more "problem" is that every new user has a different
login which makes the path to the registry.dat file different for every user who
logs on. I have not tried that solution yeat, it might work but it would be
better to do it something like with Netscape 4:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\Users]
"CurrentUser"="default"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\Users\default]
"DirRoot"="h:\\.nscape"

Or as I said in my previous post, a command-line option or environment variable,
like the MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH, maybe a MOZ_PROFILE_PATH?

Comment 3

[gavin long]

Excuse me if I'm being dumb: I'm still not clear exactly what you're after, so
I'm going ask some more questions.

What you're describing sounds a lot like bug 144712, or maybe bug 65960.  Hmm.
They may be duplicates of each other, too...

Comment 4

[Fredrik Aminoff]

> What you're describing sounds a lot like bug 144712, or maybe bug 65960.  Hmm.
> They may be duplicates of each other, too...

There are some overlapping things between the two bugs.

bug 144712 mentions my wish:
> another case of this would be when the user is on a network and has, say ,a
> writable home folder mapped to a drive letter or path or whatever. When the
> account is created, a default profile of some kind, perhaps customized to the
> user for email and stuff, is copied to the home folder. Then all machines on 
> the network are setup to use whatever the home folder is mapped to as the 
> "profile root folder" I am talking about.

But bug 65960 is more like the feature I am talking about.
>Well, I have on use for this.  With netscape 4.xx I have a profile located on a 
>users home drive. (ie. H:\Netscape).  I have this set in the registry, and 
>create a default netscape configuration when the user account is created.  I 
>want to be able to do the same thing with mozilla. 

The problem as I see is it that not everyone running windows on the client use 
the roaming profile features of NT/Win2k-domains. A lot of systems have 
Mandatory profiles instead and every user gets the same profile and can not 
change the profile. So instead of using the profile feature you store all the 
user-specific configuration on the users homedirectory (Usually H:\). Most 
applications have the possibility to point to a directory where to find 
configurations. 
Netscape 4.x was very nice to work with in this manner. A textbased 
configuration-file that you could sed/awk or edit right from the unix-shell on 
the server. And one setting in the registry that pointed to h:\.nscape.
Usually you set up the client with read-only access to almost the entire 
C:\-drive and therefor the solution with c:\documents and settings and the 
registry.dat-file is generally a bad idea.

Comment 5

[Fredrik Aminoff]

I have sort of solved this on my own.
In the registry.dat the path to the profile is stored. So I simply pointed to
the profile at h:\.mozilla and then used that registry.dat inside the mandatory
profile so every user gets that registry.dat when they login. That works.
There is only one "problem", since mozilla does store the [random string] inside
registry.dat all our thousands of users have the same random string, otherwise
it doesn't work.
Maybe all the other bugs (are there more?) together would solve my problem. This
bug has been UNCONFIRMED for quite some time now.

bug 137006
bug 65960
bug 144712
bug 12911

Comment 6

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

I would like to see this, but not as a Windows registry key. A config file in 
the mozilla install directory would be far more portable. 

Comment 7

[alanjstr]

*** Bug 219072 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Art Wildman]

Looks like some progress is being made... (Any Duplicates?)

Mozilla Client Customization Kit (Custom Installer & Profile Manager)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck/

Bugzilla Bug# 124418 - Mozilla CCK deployment barriers
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124418

Bug# 24954 - [deployment]Need ability to specify with -installer the Users directory
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24954

Bug# 55309 - Need an option to store migrated profiles in a user's choice of
location
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55309

Comment 9

[Nitin (vfwlkr)]

This has been fixed in firefox per bug 214675
See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=80844&start=15

 firefox.exe -Profile "Path/to/profile" works.

Comment 10

[Jesse Ruderman]

vfwlkr: that comment would have maded more sense on bug 125721, "startup
argument to choose a profile location".