490286 - Installing personas for Firefox corrupts the user profile.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Mozilla Labs Graveyard :: Personas Plus, defect)

Description

[disposablemail]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.9) Gecko/2009040821 Firefox/3.0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.9) Gecko/2009040821 Firefox/3.0.9

Installing Personas for Firefox corrupts the user profile.  Tabs that should only be displayed once (upon update or installation of add-ons like iMacros or Personas) will always appear on Firefox start.  Default Persona can be changed while Firefox is running, but reverts to default upon restart.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install Personas
2.Change default persona to another 
3. Close & Restart Firefox 


Actual Results:  
Tabs that should only be displayed once (upon update or installation of add-ons like iMacros or Personas) will always appear on Firefox start.
Default Persona can be changed while Firefox is running, but reverts to default upon restart.

Expected Results:  
All tabs that should display only once, should only be displayed immediately upon firefox restart after installation/update.  All changes made to Persona selection should be persistent.

Comment 1

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

It sounds like you're reporting two bugs: that some tabs display more than once and that Firefox doesn't show your selected persona when you restart Firefox.

Regarding the first bug, which URLs appear in those tabs that appear on firefox start, and are those tabs open when you quit Firefox?

Regarding the second bug, what persona is selected when you quit Firefox, and does the Personas menu say that persona is selected after you restart (even though the persona itself doesn't appear)?  To check, open the Personas menu inside the Tools menu and look at the topmost item in the menu, which should be the name of the selected persona.

Comment 2

[Bob Primak]

When I selected a Persona, it took over my Theme. Then onwards I cannot see the contents of the Downloads, History, or Add-ons windows. I cannot uninstall Personas because the Add-ons window is empty of contents. I will have to completely remove Firefox and start over because of this bug.

Comment 3

[Bob Primak]

My issue went away only after a full uninstall and reinstall of Firefox, effectively creating a new Profile. There appears to be a conflict between the old Firefox 3.5.x Themes and the new Firefox 3.6 Personas features. Themes has to be removed before Personas will work properly, and the upgrade installer did not remove the Themes feature before installing the new Personas. Hence the conflict which messed up the entire Firefox graphical interface. Or so I have concluded so far. Thank God for the FEBE extension, or else I'd still be rebuilding my Profile. Making a new FEBE backup right now!

Comment 4

[Bob Primak]

By the way, I do prefer Personas over Themes, if I have to choose one or the other. Selecting ANY Persona while Themes is still installed will cause at least some Profile corruption, in my observations so far. It's the features themselves which are not compatible with each other, I think.

Comment 5

[Ryan Doherty (:rdoherty)]

We're unable to reproduce and no response to original issue. Newer comments are unrelated.

Comment 6

[Bob Primak]

@Ryan Doherty -- 

Does this mean that my issue is a different bug, and should be investigated as a different bug report? Or are you saying that my issue has also not been reproduced in your testing? The bug showed up immediately after a Firefox 3.5.7 to Firefox 3.6 upgrade in an Administrator Account under Windows XP Professional. 

I assure you that my issue is very real, and did also involve the Personas plug-in creating a conflict which did in fact produce some sort of corruption of the current user's Firefox Profile. I would be glad to re-post as a separate bug report if you are interested.

Comment 7

[Bob Primak]

I am sorry about my Comments here. I actually should have been posting under Bug Report # 520124, where the discussion closely parallels the issue I am discussing here. If possible, could my Comments be moved to that Report thread? (Numbers 2, 3, 4 and 6 here). Again, sorry for intruding into this thread, which is clearly about a different issue.

Comment 8

[Ryan Doherty (:rdoherty)]

Sorry, comments can't be moved, you'll have to repost them, thanks!

Comment 9

[Bob Primak]

Done, and disregard erroneous postings here, everyone. The other thread was very enlightening about my issue, BTW.