752822 - Profile missing error message should indicate to user the location of the profile

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Paul Silaghi, QA [:pauly]]

STR:
1)  Firefox not running
2)  Rename profile folder
3)  Start Firefox

Actual results:
"Your firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible"

Expected results:
The error message should indicate to user the expected location of the profile

Comment 1

[Nick H.]

From my perspective, Paul Silaghi hits the nail on the head.

I'd write the code myself, but my programming is rusty. (nearly 10 years)

Comment 2

[OrPLUvXMIe]

Anyone? Would be really helpful. Especially because the path I try to convey via profiles.ini doesn't show up in my strace, so I'm unsure whether Firefox even really tries to read anything from my profile.

Comment 3

[OrPLUvXMIe]

Turns out the message was very misleading. The problem was not at all about my profile directory (the one with prefs.js). Instead, there was a filename conflict which prevented creation of the ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox directory. The error can be provoked by missing write protection, or a dead symlink. For strangest of reasons, when I instead provoke the name conflict with an empty file, firefox just quits silently, no visible indication it had ever started.

Comment 4

[Timea Zsoldos [:tzsoldos], Desktop QA]

This issue is still reproducible, testing on Windows 10 and on Ubuntu 22, using Firefox 125.0b7 and Firefox Nightly 126.0a1.