283379 - Firefox "overshares" cookies - probably due to not starting separate processes

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 117222

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Zarko]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Build Identifier: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox&os=win&lang=en-US

I'll first list the expected behavior which IE follows and is the make or 
break for multiple sessions/logins. The Ctrl-N lunches new thread and all 
cookies are shared, but double-click on shortcuts (desktop, menus, quick-
launch ...) starts new process and no temp/session cookies are shared (whihc 
is only natural since they are memory-only).

Firefox either never starts new process or jumps to already running process to 
grab temp/session cookies. This completely prevents multisession 
communication. Yahoo mail is the easiest repro - try to log in wiht two 
different usernames and see for yourself 


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch Firefox by double-clicking it's shortcut to make sure it's the new 
process/session
2. Go to http://mail.yahoo.com/?.intl=us, login under one username (say ABC)
3. Launch the second Firefox session by double-clicking it's shortcut
4. Go to http://mail.yahoo.com/?.intl=us, try to login under another username 
(say QWE)

Actual Results:  
You'll never reach the step 4 actually since you never got the new session at 
all.


Expected Results:  
Launch new process on double-clicking the shortcut or ensure new session by 
not sharing temp/session cookies. New process is actually much safer and has 
aditional uses (whne something dies other processes remain alive, but other 
threads usually dies too).

This is the fundamental problem of not allowing multiple processes and it's 
actually easier to allow then to disallow. Not to mention that this breaks a 
rather common advanced user pattern and is actually the reason to hardly ever 
launch Firefox again after the initial excitement period.

This is also the stability issue. For example, while writing this I have 4 IE 
processes - 2 for Yahoo, and one for eBay and Google - guess which browser I 
have to use :-). My non-yahoo processes are there solely for the purpose of 
isolation and therefore stability, which is also a time saver.

The related issue is that the behavior of Ctrl-N ends up being 
undistibgushable from the new process/session launch. Usually expected 
behavior of Ctrl-N is to retain the URL of the window from which it was 
spawned while the usually expected behavior of the new process/session is to 
go to the home page.

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Having multiple Mozilla processes running at once is non-trivial. The profile
system currently can't handle it and likely won't for the foreseeable future.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 117222 ***

Comment 2

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

The bug that this was duped to represents the only thing close to a solution for
the problem you're reporting. As I stated before, having multiple processes of
Mozilla running isn't something that will be done in the near future.

See bug 230884 and bug 260107 for Firefox specifics, and bug 135137, which is
about implementing a more general solution (and still nowhere near being fixed).