154875 - Profile fix needs to be fixed

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 135137

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Keith Briscoe]

Mozilla recently changed so that launching a second instance of Mozilla invoked
the profile manager, and the profile in use by existing Mozilla processes was
locked.  This was to designed to prevent profile corruption.

This is not an acceptable solution.  For most users, there is only one profile
they would want to choose.  Having that profile be unavailable simply adds to
the frustration.  They are just unable to launch Mozilla when that is what they
intended to do.  Mozilla's usability just took a nose dive in my opinion.

Profile corruption be damned.  This is such a horrible solution that I think it
should be backed out until a better solution is found.  Even if it is not backed
out, I would like to know the bug# of this "solution" so that I can back it out
myself until it is really fixed.

Here are some off-the-top-of-my-head better solutions:

1) Only open the profile read-write for the first instance.  Additional
instances open the profile read-only.

Positives: No profile corruption.  User is actually able to use their browser.
Negatives: Profile changes in secondary processes will be lost.

2) Manage the profile in a separate process.  Have each Mozilla instance manage
the profile through this manager.

Positives: No profile corruption.  User is actually able to use their browser.
Negatives: Major code changes, although -turbo code may be re-used to be the
manager.

3) Back out the change.

Positives: Easy fix.  User is actually able to use their browser.
Negatives: Possibility of profile corruption (albeit unlikely).

4) Leave things like this.
Positives: Easy.  Profiles can't be corrupted because they can't be used half of
the time.
Negatives: You need to supply me with a bug number for this prior "fix".  I
really am going to fork Mozilla over this.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

1. yes that will be possible implemented in the future.
2. doesn't work if you access the profile with different systems
3. why ? only a few people have probelsm with that but many users got problems
with corrupted profiles. AFAIk this will never backed out
4. search yourself for the bug number. Search in the same component with the
summary "instances" for fixed bugs

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 135137 ***

Comment 2

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

The bug which led to profile locking was bug 76431. Do with that info what you
may to your own tree. But, yes, we are working on making profiles shareable
without corruption. Until then, there is locking.

Comment 3

[K'Trina Medina]

Verified as a dupe of bug 135137. 
Related bug 76431 led to profile locking.