271191 - Can't run Firefox as different user when another instance is active

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, enhancement)

Description

[Anton Gavrilov]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

A typical scenario where it becomes a problem:

Suppose I'm surfing the web with Firefox while logged into a limited user
account on NT/2k/XP.  I've opened like 20 pages already and then I stumble onto
a page where Macromedia Flash 7.0 is required.  To install the extension without
closing all firefox Windows, I right-click the Firefox icon, choose "Run as..."
and enter the Administrator's password.

But Firefox just opens a new window instead of starting a new instance with
higher priveleges.

Another example: I start Explorer (or another file manager) with higher
privileges to browse to a folder which would otherwise be inaccessible. 
Double-click and .htm file, and guess what?   I cannot access the document until
I close all Firefox windows.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

To enable multiple Firefox instances, you need to set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 as an
environment variable in Windows, otherwise, invoking Firefox will always add to
the current instance.  This is by design and not likely to change at any time in
the forseeable future.

Comment 2

[Anton Gavrilov]

Broken by design?  Okay, I'll turn it into a feature request then.

I want to be able to start another instance of firefox as different by simply
right-clicking on the Firefox icon and choosing "Run as...".  Compare this to
starting the console, SETting MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1, CD'ing to the Firefox folder and
typing "firefox".  Granted that you're aware of the very existence of MOZ_NO_REMOTE.

Is shouldn't be a whole lot of work to check if the other instance(s) of firefox
is/are running as different user and start a new instance automatically? 
strcmp(getenv("USERPROFILE"), userprofile_of_another_instance) or something?

Comment 3

[Xanthor Sccas]

I've got the same bug on GNU/Linux.
Should I open a new bug ?

(In reply to comment #1)
> To enable multiple Firefox instances, you need to set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 as an
> environment variable in Windows
This didn't work on Linux (but maybe it's only a win32 option)


By the way, it works perfectly with Mozilla...

Comment 4

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

Invalid as per comment 1

Comment 5

[William Bumgarner [:zsinj]]

*** Bug 300392 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

*** Bug 317040 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***