1617722 - "You've launched an older version of Firefox" when starting Firefox 73.0.1 with Release profile

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect, P3)

Description

[Norm]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:73.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/73.0

Steps to reproduce:

I due to a current bug under investigation, I had to stop using Nightly and go back to the Release Version. I have both Nightly and Release on my MacBook Pro computer. I set up a long time ago using instructions from Mozilla when I first joined Nightly on how to setup a pop-up box that allows me to choose which profile to run, RELEASE or NIGHTLY. I selected my old RELEASE profile, which may not have been updated in a while due to non-use.

Actual results:

Double clicking to launch Firefox release either launches Nightly or pops an error saying I am running an older version of Firefox and I am FORCED to create a new blank profile, even though I am running the latest release version 73.0.1.

So what is this error looking at? Older than what? Is the code comparing my release version 73.0.1 to a newer NIGHTLY release? You bet the release version is older than the Nightly version. But the software should not compare Release against Nightly and pop the older error.

Or its getting the Older Version error from some other faulty comparison.

Expected results:

Firefox Release and Firefox Nightly should not interact in any way. The Nightly profile only works with Nightly and the Release profile only works with Release. And never the twain shall meet.

I cannot run both versions at the same time and the software used to be programmed correctly to warn me another INSTANCE of Firefox was running, without any consideration of Version. Just an INSTANCE.

Quit the running version, start the other without the kind of problems detailed in this report.

Comment 1

[Norm]

Attachment: The improper error message

Comment 2

[Norm]

Attachment: The Pop-up from years ago where I can select the right profile

I have no idea how I created this preference chooser. It was from instructions on Mozilla somewhere.

But if I search support with the search term "Run Nightly and Release on the same machine" I get over 2,000 hits.

To the best of my relocation the instruction on running both Nightly and Release was somewhere in the FAQ for new nightly users.

Comment 3

[Norm]

Attachment: The results of being FORCED to use a new empty profile when I have a perfectly good one that I'm not permitted to use.

Stop trying to warn me or protect me from something I KNOW FOR SURE I WANT TO DO.

I don't care about bookmarks, all my bookmarks are stored on rainbow.io in the cloud and available from any browser.

LOAD THE PROFILE I TELL YOU TO LOAD unless it is proven to be corrupt, which I highly doubt (plus I have backups)

Comment 4

[Norm]

I figured I better dive in and see if I could fix this and I did indeed fix it.

I have no idea how I started release and then chose the Nightly Profile. I don't think I did. In the past, it would not even let me start an older version with a profile from a newer version.

Where does compatibility.ini get its LAST VERSION information? Is LAST VERSION shared across profiles? Why would it even let me launch release 73 with a profile that came from Nightly with a later version?

Firefox Release wasn't running with the Nightly profile anyway because the false entry for LAST VERSION was in the RELEASE profile. How is that even possible?

But when I went into the Release profile that wouldn't run and opened compatibility.ini there is was under LAST VERSION.... The current nightly version. That is what was triggering the Older Version error.

So I opened the new empty profile compatibility.ini file I was forced to create and copied the entire contents of compatibility.ini and pasted them into the profile that wouldn't run. The entry for LAST VERSION was now set to 69.0 and the current release is 73.0.1. Voila, the profile runs.

I am going to leave this as a bug because it should not be possible to create an entry in the LAST VERSION field higher than the current version running that profile. In other words, it should not have run the Nightly profile if I did in fact select the Nightly profile after launching Release.

I still cannot explain how the entries from the Nightly Profile got into the Release Profile thereby making the release profile unusable.

No ordinary user should ever face this problem.

Comment 5

[Gingerbread Man]

Please do the following:

1. Enter about:support into the address bar.
2. Next to Profile Folder, click the Open Folder button.
3. In the file manager window that opened, go up two folders to the …Firefox folder.
4. From that folder, attach profiles.ini and installs.ini.

(In reply to Norm from comment #0)

But the software should not compare Release against Nightly and pop the older error.

Firefox prevents you from starting with an older version to avoid corrupting your data (Firefox 73 < Firefox 75). There's a command line option to bypass that at your own risk, but please don't use it at least until this report is resolved.

(In reply to Norm from comment #2)

I have no idea how I created this preference chooser. It was from instructions on Mozilla somewhere.

You launched Firefox with the -ProfileManager command line option and unchecked "Use the selected profile without asking at startup".

But if I search support with the search term "Run Nightly and Release on the same machine" I get over 2,000 hits.

Create a shortcut for Nightly and add -no-remote to its command line.

Comment 6

[Norm]

Profiles.ini and installs.ini attached as requested

Comment 7

[Norm]

Attachment: installs.ini

Comment 8

[Norm]

Attachment: profiles.ini

Comment 9

[github.com]

I see the same error but under different circumstances.

• I run two user accounts on my Mac.
• I run Firefox Developer Edition,
• which was configured to automatically update on the nightly channel.

If Firefox is open in both user accounts when it updates, I see this message in the user account which was not active at the time.

I have worked around this issue by setting Firefox to prompt me for updates. I then ensure that the other user account does not have a running instance before I update.

I believe Firefox should check for this situation and either:

a. Handle it gracefully, or
b. Refuse to update.

Comment 10

[ck]

Still broke. Sad there is no valuable info provided in the error... like versions and path to resolution.

Comment 11

[ck]

Issue "resolved" by clearing compatibility.ini which is located in the roaming profile.
I don't like this solution -- Using a newer profile with an older version of FF may not be healthy for the data.
Hopefully, if there is an issue, it will rear it's ugly head sooner, not later.

Old...

[Compatibility]
LastVersion=109.0_20221218190303/20221218190303
LastOSABI=WINNT_x86_64-msvc
LastPlatformDir=C:\Program Files\Firefox Developer Edition
LastAppDir=C:\Program Files\Firefox Developer Edition\browser

New...

[Compatibility]
LastVersion=108.0.1_20221215175817/20221215175817
LastOSABI=WINNT_x86_64-msvc
LastPlatformDir=C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
LastAppDir=C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser