490731 - Duplication of Smart Bookmarks in a Windows mandatory profile environment.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 471850

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Thomas Higgins]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.9) Gecko/2009040821 Firefox/3.0.9 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.9) Gecko/2009040821 Firefox/3.0.9 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

In a Windows Terminal Server Environment, using mandatory profiles (where settings are wiped on logoff and not saved) Firefox 3.0.x continually duplicates the Smart Bookmark folders: 'Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags'

Using Firefox 2, it is possible to redirect the bookmarks.html file. The places.sqlite file cannot be redirected in Firefox 3 (as mentioned by bug 385077). Because of this we are trialling Firefox 3 with importing the bookmarks.html file on opening Firefox, and exporting the bookmarks to an HTML on close.

Unfortunately this makes Firefox 3 re-create the Smart Bookmarks every time the user opens up Firefox 3. I have tried setting:

user_pref("browser.places.createdDefaultQueries", true);

in the mandatory profile prefs.js, but it did not fix the issue, as the Smart Bookmarks still re-create every time.

I would like to request a preference that will stop the creation of the Smart Bookmarks. This will allow Firefox 3 to work in a mandatory Profile environment and let us have the ability to redirect bookmarks for users.

I made a post in the ArsTechnica forums about this subject some time ago, if you want to go over some of the paths I went down:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/342001036931

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set the following in a Windows mandatory profile:
user_pref("browser.places.createdDefaultQueries", true);
user_pref("browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML", true);
user_pref("browser.bookmarks.file", "X:\\bookmarks.html");
user_pref("browser.places.importBookmarksHTML", true);
user_pref("browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion", 1);
2. Log off and on again.
Actual Results:  
Duplication of the Smart Bookmark folders.

Expected Results:  
The smart bookmarks would not duplicate.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

sounds like this is a dupe of bug 471850, actually fixed for 3.5
if you use autoExportHTML in 3.0.x and you import on every start there's no way to stop duplication.