1933261 - firefox hangs on startup when Profiles directory is empty, but associated profiles.ini remains

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Gagan Sidhu]

Attachment: Screen Recording 2024-11-25 at 10.17.57 AM.mp4

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:132.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/132.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. delete the contents of the Profiles directory in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles but do not nuke the Profiles folder
2. leave profiles.ini and everything else intact.
3. run firefox

Actual results:

firefox hangs becasue it presumably uses the profiles.ini to load a profile that no longer exists.

Expected results:

there should probably be a check on profiles.ini to prevent firefox from trying to load a profile that no longer exists.

Comment 1

[Gagan Sidhu]

Attachment: 10.15 crashlog.txt

Comment 2

[Gagan Sidhu]

Attachment: Screen Recording 2024-11-25 at 10.30.49 AM.mp4

embarrassing icon in older video.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Toolkit::Startup and Profile System' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 4

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: Bug 1933261: Fix the profile missing and downgrade UIs to not hang on startup. r=spohl!

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/06c812b3e88c
Fix the profile missing and downgrade UIs to not hang on startup. r=spohl

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The bug has a release status flag that shows some version of Firefox is affected, thus it will be considered confirmed.

Comment 7

[Gagan Sidhu]

looks like the team addressed this swiftly. thanks.

hopefully it'll make it in 133.0.1?

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Gagan Sidhu from comment #7)

looks like the team addressed this swiftly. thanks.

hopefully it'll make it in 133.0.1?

As this is not a security issue and the number of affected users is extremely low this will probably not be fixed in a 133.0.x release. It should be taken in 134 though.

Comment 9

[Gagan Sidhu]

no prob. thanks pete--i mean dave

Comment 10

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/06c812b3e88c

Comment 11

[Gagan Sidhu]

pete--i mean dave, i have a question: isn't there any way to create a new profile if firefox cannot find the one referenced in profiles.ini?

shouldn't we do something where the browser creates a new profile or nukes profiles.ini if there are no profiles in Profiles/* that are referenced in profiles.ini?

Comment 12

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Gagan Sidhu from comment #11)

pete--i mean dave, i have a question: isn't there any way to create a new profile if firefox cannot find the one referenced in profiles.ini?

shouldn't we do something where the browser creates a new profile or nukes profiles.ini if there are no profiles in Profiles/* that are referenced in profiles.ini?

That probably falls under bug 1551773.

Comment 13

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The patch landed in nightly and beta is affected.
:mossop, is this bug important enough to require an uplift?

• If yes, please nominate the patch for beta approval.
• If no, please set status-firefox134 to wontfix.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 14

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: Bug 1933261: Fix the profile missing and downgrade UIs to not hang on startup. r=spohl!

Original Revision: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D230256

Comment 15

[Phabricator Automation]

beta Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: Firefox hangs on startup if the profile folder has been deleted
• Code covered by automated testing: no
• Fix verified in Nightly: yes
• Needs manual QE test: no
• Steps to reproduce for manual QE testing: N/A
• Risk associated with taking this patch: Very low
• Explanation of risk level: Adds a missing initialise step
• String changes made/needed: None
• Is Android affected?: no

Comment 16

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: Bug 1933261: Fix the profile missing and downgrade UIs to not hang on startup. r=spohl!

Original Revision: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D230256

Comment 17

[Phabricator Automation]

esr128 Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: Firefox hangs on startup if the profile folder has been deleted
• Code covered by automated testing: no
• Fix verified in Nightly: yes
• Needs manual QE test: no
• Steps to reproduce for manual QE testing: N/A
• Risk associated with taking this patch: Very low
• Explanation of risk level: Adds a missing initialise step
• String changes made/needed: None
• Is Android affected?: no

Comment 18

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/5797ffd12989

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr128/rev/821efd131ba3

Comment 20

[Alexandru Trif, Desktop Test Engineering [:atrif]]

Reproduced the issue with Firefox 133.0.3 on macOS 12. Firefox will no longer be opened and it will hang after deleting the profiles inside ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles but leaving the Profiles folder.
The issue is verified fixed with Firefox 135.0a1 (2024-12-19), 134.0b10 and 128.6.0esr. Firefox no longer hangs and the Profile Missing dialog is displayed.