184913 - Unable to use Mozilla in an environment where the home directory is shared

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 135137

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Peter Anvin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021119
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021119

Mozilla, like Netscape before it, locks a profile for the duration of a login
session, instead of implementing any kind of sensible data sharing and locking
system.  There is a PR on this already, bug 135137.  Unfortunately, this also
means Mozilla is nearly unusable in any environment where users' home
directories are shared between machines -- it means that only one instance of
Mozilla can be run by any user *anywhere across the network*.  In an environment
where users have main workstations but also move around to "visitor stations",
this can be unbelievably obnoxious.

I am filing this as a separate PR mostly to indicate this other aspect of the
problem, and to underscore the seriousness of it.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have a shared home directory
2. Run Mozilla on one system
3. Try to run Mozilla on another system

Actual Results:  
Mozilla complains that the profile is locked and pops up the profile chooser

Expected Results:  
Started as normal, sharing the profile

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

>I am filing this as a separate PR mostly to indicate this other aspect of the
>problem, and to underscore the seriousness of it.

But it's exactly the same problem and that means that it's exaclty the same bug.


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

Comment 2

[Felix Miata]

v