295427 - Extensions installation fails without write bits to firefox install directory for multiuser installations

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Ken Takusagawa]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

If user A installs firefox, and removes write permissions for himself, user B
can no longer install extensions.

User A:
1. rm -fr ~/.mozilla
2. firefox-installer (run as User A, not (necessarily) as root)
   install "Standard" into "/tmp/firefox"
3. chmod -R a+rX /tmp/firefox/
4. chmod -R u-w /tmp/firefox/

Then, User B does:

5. rm -fr ~/.mozilla
6. /tmp/firefox/firefox
7. Install an extension
  My testcase has been the SmoothWheel extension (version 0.44.5.20050523) at
  the URL above, however the bug should be reproducible with any extension.
8. Quit Firefox
9. Restart firefox: /tmp/firefox/firefox
10. Menu bar | Tools | Extensions shows the extension wasn't installed.


Step 4 is key!  By omitting it, everything works fine; i.e., the extension does
get installed in user B's ~/.mozilla in step 10.

Apparently, the extension manager "cares" about user A's write bits to the
firefox install location, even if it is running as user B.  Note that user B
never has write permissions in /tmp/firefox whatsoever.  The "owner" write
permissions (for owner=userA) is affecting user B.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ken Takusagawa]

I forgot to mention 
step 2.5: Quit the firefox the runs immediately after the installer.

Comment 2

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Does it happen with the recent trunk builds? The extensions system has been
reworked, but I can't test on a Linux system myself.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Tested using the steps in comment #0 with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686;
en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20050927 Firefox/1.4 ID:2005092705 and this is WFM