516925 - Upgrade as root via sudo takes ownership of profile files

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Nic]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3

When trying to upgrade Firefox manually (i.e. not by apt-get for my distro) from 3.5.1 to 3.5.3, I tried help -> check for updates.

As per Bug-318855, this won't work unless you run firefox as root.  This trashes the ownership of some of the files in my normal users profile, and to get firefox to work correctly again, you have to change the ownership

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Login as a normal user
2. Run "sudo firefox"
3. Run "check for updates" and let it upgrade
4. Quit firefox
5. Run as normal user
6. Watch the error message appear
Actual Results:  
Firefox puts a big red banner across the top of the screen and tells me that my profile is damaged in some way.

It does give helpful links, although the actual solution is at least 3 clicks away.

Expected Results:  
Firefox should work as before (with upgrades).  In the background, this means that when using sudo firefox and running the upgrade (and I would guess anything else while run this way), firefox should put the ownership of the files within the profile in use back to the original owner.

I suspect a proper fix for Bug-318855 will handle this automatically.

Also, the documentation could be improved - as someone who understands Unix, it's mildly annoying that I am referred to a web-page that lists my problem, but then tells me to go somewhere else (referring to "find my profile").  If there's a known issue, the fix should be detailed in one place.  This is worse for a normal user - there's no "go ask your root guy to fix it" or guide to how to fix the ownership of the profile files.

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.12 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
Also, please consider using the most recent Firefox 4 beta build, your bug may be resolved there.

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.