263988 - 'profile in use' whem it is not

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 253950

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Olaf]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913

- I created a new profile by importing my Mozilla's settings
- started Firefox
- closed it
- started Firefox again

Result: I see the profile manager that tells me that my default profile is in
use; I already checked for *lock* files in ~/.mozilla/firefox


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Andreas Mohr]

----------
NOTE: this bug should be reassigned Severity major or even critical!

The subject may be changed to
'profile in use' when it is not --> need to purge stale lock file?
----------

The same thing happens on
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041003 Firefox/0.10
(and has been happening several times for a while on older Mozilla versions, too)

For me, it sometimes happens after system crash (lock file
~/.mozilla/firefox/default.tuw/lock from old pre-crash Firefox session still there).

Since this is very inconvenient for unexperienced users (they really don't know
how to delete the lock file, nor do they even know that it is a lockfile problem
from staring at the session logon window; thus they cannot access their default
profile any more with ALL of their session data!!), I readjust it to have
severity major (after all it's not just about a single web site malfunctioning
or a browser session crashing, but instead about permanent loss of session data
to inexperienced users).

Such a bug should be fixed before 1.0 proper if at all possible.

In fact one could almost assign Severity critical due to this nature (loss of data).

Thanks!

Comment 2

[AaronCompNetSys]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913
> Result: I see the profile manager that tells me that my default profile is in
> use; I already checked for *lock* files in ~/.mozilla/firefox
>
> Reproducible: Always
> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1.    >>>>>[Find instance where zombie process continues after exit]
> 2.    >>>>>[Atempt restart, profile locked message]


I also agree that this is a critical bug, and needs to be resolved as an issue
for unexperienced users.

I have also experieces this in linux and windows enviroments, with both creating
cotastofies for the users.  The Firefox process becomes a zombie and when
Firefox is relaunched, the default process may be accessed.

FIX ONE:   Restart computer
FIX TWO:   Manually kill process
FIX THREE: Provide Windows Resources kit kill.exe and shortcut as 
           kill.exe firefox*
           http://www.petri.co.il/download_free_reskit_tools.htm
FIX FINAL: Resolve bug

Comment 3

[geoff]

This occurs everytime certain sites are visited (after pop-up)
eg www.asx.com.au and a share price requested, after closing firefox and then
restarting firefox it will prompt to create a new profile. checked windows task
manager and found firefox.exe still running, closed this task and then able to
restart firefox with no profile prompt

Comment 4

[daneel]

If you bring up the task manager and kill Firefox that will fix it.
Seems to happen after and hang of the web browser. I also had this problem so
far about twice. On Winders anyway. It's still running in memory and killing it
cured it.

Comment 5

[Worcester12345]

Is this a duplicate of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253950

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 253950 ***