465166 - Profile on Fat32 goes corrupt when switching between OS X (10.5) to Windows (Vista) and back again

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[arjun mehta]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

I've noticed this bug since 3.0.1. Prior to this (3.0 included) everything worked well and I could have my profile on a Fat32 partition flawlessly. I shared the same profile between Firefox on OS X (10.5) and Windows (Vista).

However after upgrading to 3.0.1 (and now at 3.0.4) I noticed that in my OS X install of Firefox the following would happen:
1. My homepage would not load on start. Just a blank white page, and nothing in the address bar.
2. My bookmarks were all gone.
3. My history was all gone.
4. Not only was my history gone, but when I went to any site, I could only move forward. The back button would not work (disabled), indicating to me that new history could not be recorded.
5 Interestingly my search engine list was still in tact, included all my mycroft search bar addins.
6. The profile continued/continues to work just fine on my Windows installation.

I should note, this is NOT ONLY for SHARED profiles. I set up a new profile just for my OS X install on the fat32 partition and as long as I stayed within OS X, everything worked just fine. I could even restart the computer, and come back into OS X and everything worked. But as soon as I rebooted into Vista, and then came back into OS X to use the profile, it had the same symptoms as before.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. From within OS X, create a new profile directory on a FAT32 partition that can also be accessed by Windows. Copying an existing profile to this location would work well.
2. In profiles.ini point to that profile 
3. Start Firefox and notice that everything works as it should.
4. Restart computer in windows.
5. Restart computer in OS X.
6. Load Firefox within OS X. Everything will likely be gone.
Actual Results:  
Bookmarks, History and Homepage disappear.

Expected Results:  
Retain all profile information in working condition to allow for cross-platform functionality and shared profiles over different operating systems.

This is really important to resolve as it really limits cross platform functionality especially on dual booted Mac systems. I like to have a shared profile between OS X and Windows Vista and have not been able to do this since 3.0.1.

I marked it as critical because basically my profile gets wiped out (though completely recoverable). Not sure if that's an appropriate rating or not.

Hope it can be resolved soon! Thanks guys.

Comment 1

[Justus]

I can confirm this bug and have some additional information I found in my investigation. This bug has nothing to do with Windows, it is exclusively a Mac OS X bug. Firefox 3.0.1+ on Mac OS X cannot setup or read a profile that is located on a FAT 32 partition. Before that release, there was no problem with profiles on FAT32 partitions. I had a working profile on a FAT32 partition for months.

As a side note, this problem does not affect Thunderbird.

The steps I used to reproduce the issue.

Reproducible: Always

1. Open Firefox Profile Manager (see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager)
2. Click "Create Profile"
3. Click "Continue"
4. Enter "FAT32Profile" in the profile name field
5. Click "Choose Folder..."
6. Choose or create a folder for the profile on a FAT32 disk (I used /Volumes/COMMON/Profiles/Firefox/FAT32Profile where /Volumes/COMMON is my FAT32 partition)
7. Click "Choose"
8. Click "Done"
9. Highlight the new profile, and click "Start Firefox"
10. Create Bookmark for any page.
11. Close Firefox
12. Restart Firefox

At this point Firefox will behave as described in the original post. I found after much searching that the profile.ini contains incorrect information on the profile. This file location is ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profile.ini


The profiles.ini file before creating a profile on a FAT32 partition:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=Justus
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/Justus
Default=1

The profile.ini file after creating a new profile on a FAT32 partition.

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=Justus
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/Justus

[Profile1]
Name=FAT32Profile
IsRelative=0
Path=AAAAAAE+AAIAAQZDT01NT04AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQkQAAf////8MRkFUMzJQcm9maWxlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP////8AAAoASVMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB0ZpcmVmb3gAAAIALi86Vm9sdW1lczpDT01NT046UHJvZmlsZXM6RmlyZWZveDpGQVQzMlByb2ZpbGUADgAaAAwARgBBAFQAMwAyAFAAcgBvAGYAaQBsAGUADwAOAAYAQwBPAE0ATQBPAE4AEgAeL1Byb2ZpbGVzL0ZpcmVmb3gvRkFUMzJQcm9maWxlABMADy9Wb2x1bWVzL0NPTU1PTgD//wAA
Default=1

The expected entry on line 12 of the second profile.ini file is:

Path=/Volumes/COMMON/Profiles/Firefox/FAT32Profile

I tried manually entering this into the profile.ini file, but Firefox still does not function as it should.

Comment 2

[Justus]

This bug is fixed in version 3.5.0 of Firefox. As far as I know, it is still present in earlier versions.

Comment 3

[arjun mehta]

I can also confirm that this bug has been fixed in Firefox 3.5.
Yeah!

Comment 4

[Andre Klapper]

arjun mehta: Why did you reopen this report though you wrote that it is fixed?
Is this still a problem with a recent version of Firefox?

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

arjun mehta (who seems to be gone) may have committed changes in a different tab wih the old status.
=> WFM

Comment 6

[arjun mehta]

Hi Andre!
I don't think I reopened it, did I? I haven't logged into this Bugzilla in a really long time.

Wayne Mery does give a feasible explanation of what may have happened though, as I tend to use tabs excessively! :)

Thanks for closing it! and sorry for the confusion.
Arjun