278284 - read-only default files remain read-only when copied to profile

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Dan M]

1) Use a copy of the Firefox program built of read-only files.
  (a) chmod -R 444 your program directory, or do what I did:
  (b) "install" a copy of the program by copying the program directory
      to your hard disk directly from a CD
  (c) no doubt this also shows the problem: try running Firefox from a CD
  admittedly all scenarios are unusual, but none should be a problem
2) Delete (or rename) your user profile. Pretend this a new installation.
3) Launch Firefox. Quit.

The newly generated profile is full of read-only default files, making it static
and useless. Disregarding whatever hokey reason your program directory may
contain read-only defaults, when building a new copy in the user's profile from
program templates, Firefox should initialize them writeable.

I believe that when I accidentally discovered this some time ago, only certain
profile files were read-only. I think every *.js, *.html, and *.rdf file was
affected, and only those files. But memory is a little fuzzy on that.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Reassining to Tracy for QA: bump back to me if you can reproduce this.

Comment 2

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

On WinXP I couldn't reproduce this. However, changing the installation directory
and it's contents to Read Only caused Uninstall to hang in 100% CPU 

Comment 3

[Stephanie Daugherty [:sdaugherty]]

The reference to chmod in the bug description would suggest the reporter's on some sort of *nix platform.

Comment 4

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

This has happened now on the 2001 DE release :-/ 

Releated bugs are:

Bug 364599 Some new created profile files are write protected, for example bookmarks.html and localstore.rdf  
Bug 367084 updater will fail to apply any complete updates if *any* files are " read only" 

Comment 5

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

This is fixed by Bug 364599 now.