420377 - Can't use multiple profiles concurrently.

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Dave Notman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

I created two profiles, let's call them "A" and "B".  I started Mozilla with -P "A".  While Mozilla was running, I launched a second copy with -P "B".  The second window actually used profile "A", and no error message was given.

Why I want to do this: I have multiple Yahoo mail accounts.  Yahoo uses cookies to identify a user.  In order to log in to a second mail account, you first have to log out of the first one.  However I want to create a crude process to log me into all my Yahoo mail accounts with one click of the mouse.  As presently implemented, this isn't possible with Mozilla.

Related Discussion: #117222 suggested opening a new cookie container whenever the user owned a new tab with Ctrl-N or Ctrl-T.  This generated a great deal of discussion over a long period of time.  #245070 suggested a mechanism for switching profiles when Mozilla is running.  My automation tools are pretty crude (SendKeys function in JScript), so I rather suspect that such a solution won't work for me.  #23260 suggested showing which profile is active.  135137: Multiple Gecko based applications cannot share profile data -- doesn't seem this would be a problem if I explicitly specify different profiles on the command line.

At the very least, the second launch of Mozilla should bring up a message box telling me that I'm not going to get the profile I asked for!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Launch Mozilla with profile "A"
2.While first copy is running, launch Mozilla with profile "B"

Actual Results:  
Both windows use profile "A"

Expected Results:  
Second window, and any windows opened with Ctrl-N from the second window should use profile "B".

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Run the instances with -no-remote

Comment 2

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Yeah.