Closed Bug 282004 Opened 20 years ago Closed 19 years ago

fails to start and gives no error message if ~/.mozilla is not writable

Categories

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Startup and Profile System
Platform:
x86
FreeBSD
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
minor

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 246724

People

(Reporter: voisine, Assigned: benjamin)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20050211 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20050211 Firefox/1.0

If ~/.mozilla is not writable, firefox exits immediately with no error message.
I took me days to figure out what the hell was going on. I finally had to
compile it myself with debugging symbols and load it into gdb to figure it out.
A simple error message would have saved me days of frustration.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. mkdir ~/.mozilla
2. sudo chown root:wheel ~/.mozilla
3. firefox

Actual Results:  
exit status 1, no with no output

Expected Results:  
exit status 1 with "~/.mozilla not writable" printed on stderr
Did you already have a Firefox profile or not? Is this basically a request for
better error reporting?

Since you loaded it into GDB, where did the failure occur? I'm not sure that we
really intend to support readonly profiles, though it might be nice for
specialized situations such as products shipped on a CD with a pre-built "profile".
No firefox profile, just an empty ~/.mozilla directory that is not writable.
Sorry I don't have the debug version anymore. I figured it wouldn't be too hard
to find. I think the problem is in xpcom/io/nsAppFileLocationProvider.cpp but
yesterday was the first time I looked at the code so I'm not really sure.
See Bug 279934 "Firefox can only be started by root and not user" which may be 
another Dup of whatever this is.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 134903 ***
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 246724 ***
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: DUPLICATE → ---
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 246724 ***

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 246724 ***
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago → 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
Product: Firefox → Toolkit
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