45229 - Just root can register all Mozilla modules (Breaks mail/news and themes)

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 42184

(Core :: XPCOM, defect, P3)

Description

[Daniel Egger]

Is it really necessary that just the user root with a running and
accessible X can register the modules?

This prevents SuSE from shipping packages which run out of the box
because our buildsystems don't have a X server running and we cannot
access X at installation time. That means that all we can do is
sending root a mail to beg him for starting mozilla once from X to
make it usable by users.

Fixes for this problem would be either a switch which just starts mozilla
to register the modules wihtout any X access or a registry in the
homedir of each user who wants to use mozilla.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I swear this is reported.  I will find it.

Comment 2

[Decklin Foster]

Asa: check Suresh's comments on bug 33344, also bug 43512 (marked fixed.)
Perhaps these are really separate issues.

Comment 3

[David Krause]

Hi Daniel.  I have filed several bugs related to this.  Bug 41057 and it's
dependencies (Mozilla should not need write access to the binary directory) is
concerned with runtime problems with this.  Bug 42148 (Mozilla-bin must not
write to bin dir during installation) is about creating a small utility to
overcome this problem.  But I agree there is probably a better way.  I'm going
to confirm this and leave it open for now.  An idea: Why not have each user
register the modules and do all the necessary writing to ~/.mozilla/ instead of
the binary directory.  This is going to be a big problem for distributions as
you said.  I heard that Debian has a really weird install script (it doesn't
work) that tries to do this.

Comment 4

[David Krause]

Adding Ben and the other Netscape Daniel to cc.

Comment 5

[David Krause]

Oops, forgot to confirm it.

Comment 6

[David Krause]

*** Bug 48129 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[David Krause]

*** Bug 49023 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[David Krause]

*** Bug 49023 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Daniel Egger]

David, I wouldn't have a problem with the registry being written to the home
directory, but at the moment it's 300KB big which is far too much. There are
multiuser systems with 10MB quota and the users would still like to run a
webbrowser without sacrifying at least 3% of their space for a registry.
I'd like that registry program approach a lot more. Or better: The current
mozilla can register the modules when run as root. That's good since we can just
run it after the installation. The REAL problem is the userinterface which can't
register itself without an accessible X system, that should be fixed IMHO...
I'll have a look into the Gtk one whether I can do that....

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

egger, what exactly is your request? IMO, this is a dup of bug bug 42148.

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I meant bug 42184.

Comment 12

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Yes, I think it is. Marking DUP. Reopen, if necessary.

------- Additional Comments From [e-mail] 2000-08-11 17:14 -------
If you want a non-gui way of creating all the necessary files you can currently 
run "mozilla -CreateProfile" which will do all the necessary registrations, 
create a default profile and exit.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 42184 ***

Comment 13

[Daniel Egger]

I'm searching for a way to pack mozilla on a distribution without having to tell
the admin: "Please run this beast as root because otherwise your users can't use
it".

Comment 14

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Then try "mozilla -CreateProfile" (see above). It sounds as if it does just what
you want.

Comment 15

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

There are a handful of files that are generated because they depend on which 
components you have installed. One is "component.reg", but if you always 
distribute a fixed set of components you are perfectly fine pre-generating that 
file and shipping it with the binaries (Netscape does that on the Mac due to 
start-up time issues). The non-gui utility regxpcom can generate component.reg

The rest of the files are the generated "chrome" files. These, too, contain 
only relative paths and could be pre-generated and shipped as well. The build 
process creates the file bin/chrome/installed-chrome.txt which is processed on 
first startup to generate the actual chrome .rdf files used. I have heard about 
a utility called "regchrome" which does this without a gui, but I'm not sure if 
it exists of if that was a conversation about how we need it. In any case, if 
you are packaging things for distro fire up mozilla once and then include the 
files that are generated.

Comment 16

[leger]

Yes..verified as a dup