230944 - Profile directory should be locked only when necessary

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 135137

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Rennie deGraaf]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031210
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031210

I use a mozilla profile that is shared between more than one machine (it is in a
NFS-mounted home directory).  If I have mozilla running on one machine, and try
to start it on a second, I get the profile chooser dialog, because the first
machine has my profile locked.  I can work around starting two copies on the
same machine by using the "-remote" interface (I posted a script on the
mozilla-general newsgroup a few weeks back to facilitate this), but the
"-remote" interface does not work between different machines.  

The only work-around I know of is to rename the lock file, start Mozilla on the
second machine, and keep manually renaming the lock files whenever I switch
machines so that the copy I am using always thinks it has the lock.  This might
cause instability if I change my profile too much; I haven't tested this. 
Killing Mozilla entirely every time I switch machines is a definate inconvienience.

Ideally, Mozilla should only lock the profile directories when necessary, and
take appropriate steps to accomodate for unexpected profile changes, in order to
allow a profile to be shared among multiple Mozilla processes.

I have tested this behaviour on Mozilla 1.6b/Linux 2.4/x86, and on Mozilla
1.3.1/Solaris 8/SPARC.  I expect that it will also occur on any other platform
whenever a profile is shared between two or more machines.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create a mozilla profile on a directory that is shared between two or more
machines
2. Start mozilla on one machine
3. Start mozilla on a second machine that uses the same profile directory. 
Since the mozilla process on the first machine has your profile locked, you will
get the profile chooser.

Actual Results:  
I get the profile chooser, and can't use my profile because it is already in use

Expected Results:  
Mozilla should open using my default profile.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

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