211505 - Profile Manager pops up when starting two instances of Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Startup & Profiles, defect)

Description

[Jamie Zawinski]

I would like to never, ever see the profile manager:

When Mozilla starts up and decides that the thing to do is ask me to select or
create a profile, what I would like it to do instead is just exit immediately.

I run mozilla 1.3 on kiosks.  It is never appropriate for a non-default profile
to be created or used.  The only time this dialog box ever comes up is when
there is a race condition: someone has tried to launch Mozilla twice in a row,
very quickly, so the second instance goes into "second copy of Mozilla" mode
instead of into "just open a second window in the existing Mozilla" mode.

So I want to break the legs off the profile manager.  How do I do that?

Comment 1

[Benedikt Kantus]

Why don't you just check "Don't ask at startup"?

BTW, this is not the right place to ask questions. This is for bug reports.
You'd be better off in one of the end-user newsgroups.

Comment 2

[Jamie Zawinski]

> Why don't you just check "Don't ask at startup"?

I tried that, it doesn't change the behavior in any way.  The profile manager
still pops up when I run "mozilla" from the shell twice in a row.  And "don't
ask at startup" has magically become un-checked.

> BTW, this is not the right place to ask questions. This is
> for bug reports.  You'd be better off in one of the end-user
> newsgroups.

This is not a question, this is a request for new functionality that does not
currently exist.  

When I asked "how do I do that" I was giving you the benefit of the doubt -- for
I'm actually pretty sure that there is no way to do that, until you guys change
the code.  So I am making a request -- pretty please -- that you do so, which
last time I checked, is exactly the sort of thing that the bug system is for.

Comment 3

[Benedikt Kantus]

Jamie, I'm sorry. I completely misunderstood your bug report, maybe because it
was formulated like a question.

Am I right that when you run Mozilla normally, the Profile Manager doesn't
start, but when you run two instances directly one after another, it does?

What build are you exactly using?

Comment 4

[Jamie Zawinski]

I have 1.3 (final-release RPM version) running on very slow (200MHz) Red Hat 7.2
linux machines.

With no mozilla running:

Doing "mozilla & ; sleep 10 ; mozilla &" does what one would expect: opens two
mozilla windows.

Doing "mozilla &; mozilla &" opens one mozilla window, and one with the profile
manager dialog.  Presumably this is due to some race in the shell script that
launches mozilla.

(But *really* the way this situation occurs is, mozilla is not running; someone
clicks on the mozilla icon to launch it; and then because the machine is slow,
they get impatient and click again, launching the second copy.  Or they
mistakenly double-click or something.)

Instead of the profile manager dialog, I'd rather that the second mozilla just
exit.  Basically, on these kiosk systems, if I ever get to a profile-manager
state, something has gone wrong that's just going to confuse people.  Exiting is
better.

I have not yet tested this with 1.4.
happenshappens

Comment 5

[Andrew Schultz]

The reason this happens is that, when the second Mozilla is starting, the first
Mozilla instance has not gotten to the point where it can be seen by the second.
 The part that looks for existing instances lives in the startup script.  Fixing
this to behave as you expect (open two windows) would require a significant
change of the startup process.

if you want to Mozilla to exit in the case of profile locking, there is no way
to do that at runtime with a default build... A return here might do the trick:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/profile/src/nsProfile.cpp#511

you could try --enable-single-profile, but YMMV

Comment 6

[Dan Jenkins]

This is also an issue when someone quits Mozilla and quickly starts it again.
The former Mozilla hasn't closed before the new one starts, so user is prompted
by profile manager.

Also, if user has profile on network share and tries to use Mozilla from two
different computers at the same time. Again, profile manager. This confuses the
users. 

A prompt explaining profile in use would be better than create a new one.

Comment 7

[Matt Seitz]

I see this problem running the 2006032600 nightly build of 1.1a (1.8 branch).  This occurs whenever I execute the "seamonkey" command while an instance is already running, no matter how long the first instance has been running.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060326 SeaMonkey/1.1a

Comment 8

[Matt Seitz]

Hmm, it appears there might be two problems:

1. The non-RPM builds never detect duplicate sessions (Bug 122698)

2. An RPM build fails to handle duplicate sessions if they are opened to close together(Comment 4)

My problem is actually described by Bug 122698, comment 19.

It appears that resolving Bug 122698 might also resolve this problem.  I suggest adding 122698 to the "depends on" field.

Comment 9

[Misak Khachatryan]

Is this actual yet ?

Comment 10

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

This is not a bug, or at least not a current bug. See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use

Normally, invoking SeaMonkey (or Firefox or Thunderbird) a second time will open a new window (or, depending on preferences, sometimes a new tab) in the already running instance. -P <profilename> is disregarded in that case.

Resolving INVALID.