198863 - installing via sudo creates root owned .mozilla directory in real users home and then real user cannot start browser.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 52653

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Vick Perry]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

When I used sudo to install Mozilla 1.3 the initial launch of the browser
created a root owned .mozilla directory in the real user's home directory.
Afterwards the  real user could not launch the browser because the .mozilla
directory was only writable by root. The launched application hangs at startup
when attempting to create a profile.

If I recall correctly, sudo's determination of the home directory may behave
differently depending upon the linux distro. This bug happened while running
under SuSE 8.1. 

A workaround is to delete the root owned .mozilla directory in the user's home
and them have the user relaunch the browser - which creates a new .mozilla owned
by the user.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install using sudo
2.Attempt to launch browser as real user
3.Fails when attempting to write new profile to .mozilla in users home dir

Actual Results:  
Cannot create profile

Expected Results:  
Not create root owned .mozilla in real users home dir

Possible solutions:

- If the installer detects that sudo is used then the browser is initially
launched as the real user.

- If the browser or profile manager cannot write to the .mozilla directory then
provide a meaningful error so that user can fix problem.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

this is release-noted

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 52653 ***

Comment 2

[timeless]

vrfy dupe