554239 - GNOME session restore with multiple profiles

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Rich Dougherty]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100214 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100214 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.8

I run multiple instances of Firefox at the same time, each with a different profile. I have a machine which I shutdown every night and start up again every morning (OS-level suspend fails on this machine). I have configured Gnome to save and restore my session automatically.

Unfortunately Firefox gets confused when Gnome tries to restore it. Two instances of Firefox are started. One opens one of the profiles (probably the one I last used?), the other instance displays a dialog that says "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system."

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start two instances of Firefox, each with a different profile.
2. Log out.
3. Log back in.
Actual Results:  
One instance starts correctly, the other gets the error "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system."

Expected Results:  
Two instances start, each with a different profile.

This is not a big deal for me; it is a minor annoyance. I mainly want to have a go at writing a patch for something easy. I have a candidate patch ready which I will submit for review shortly.

May be related to bug 428356.

Comment 1

[Rich Dougherty]

Attachment: Patch attempt 1

- Added new method to nsINativeAppSupport so that it can be notified by nsAppRunner when the profile is available.
- Wait until profile is available before setting restart command.
- Use -no-remote and -profile to support multiple sessions.

I'm interested in any feedback on the patch, even if the functionality is rejected. Thanks!

Comment 2

[Rich Dougherty]

Comment on attachment 434149 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch attempt 1

This feature may have been discussed before: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=262258#c35

Comment 3

[Rich Dougherty]

Attachment: Patch attempt 2

- Change uuid for interface.

Comment 4

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 434153 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch attempt 2

I don't think I want to maintain the additional complexity that this patch adds.