93112 - Don't use .slt extension in name of profile folder

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[J Luh]

Mac OS X doesn't take well to folder names that have file extensions (try
creating a folder and naming it "folder.slt" and you will get a warning dialog).
I've crashed the Finder a couple times trying to open my Mozilla profile folder.

This is a problem Apple should fix, but Mozilla could help by not using the .slt
file extension in the name of the profile folder. As far as I know the .slt
extension doesn't serve any purpose.

Comment 1

[Greg K.]

".slt" refers to salt, which is the obscuration of file/pathnames Mozilla uses for security purposes.

There has been much discussion about the pros (no known route to files or directories for 
malicious code to exploit) and cons (totally un-user friendly and a poor substitute for real 
browser security) of salting. It's proven pointless to argue about it at this point.

If Mac OS X at present doesn't like dot extensions on directories, though, then Mozilla shouldn't 
do it under that OS. The desired behavior would be to salt the directory name, but omit a dot 
extension, at least under Mac OS X.

Comment 2

[Adam]

I'm not sure it really matters - Mac OS X is only concerned with specialized
extensions (.app, .bundle, .framework, etc.) and doesn't pay attention to
anything else. The error is generic - it happens for any extension you try to
add to any folder, to prevent you from adding one of the special extensions and
having the Finder think it's a bundle.

I think Mac OS X completely ignores folder extensions (unless they're one of the
specified types), and have never witnessed any problems with opening the ".slt"
profile folder. I'm sure there's some official Apple documentation about this
somewhere, though. I'd reference that and find out what they recommend before
making a decision.

Comment 3

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

> As far as I know the .slt extension doesn't serve any purpose.

It does serve a purpose. The extension allows us to know that the profile dir is
 salted. The actual profile dir is the one with the salted name and that is what
is stored in the profile registry. When you delete a profile and say "yes" to
delete files, we need to know whether to delete the parent dir as well and,
looking for the .slt suffix is how this is determined. Until some other
mechanism is in place, like adding the unsalted parent dir to the profile's
registry entry as well, the extension needs to be there.

As Alan says, since the .slt extension is not one which means anything to OS X,
I don't think it's a problem. I also have never had any problem opening this
directory in the Finder.

Until there's some evidence that this is a real problem, marking WONTFIX.

Comment 4

[J Luh]

Since no one else has experienced problems, I agree the .slt extension probably
is not the cause of the Finder crashes I experienced.

The use of the .slt extension to identify "salted" directories sounds somewhat
clumsy, thoug; are there plans to replace that mechanism with something cleaner?

Comment 5

[Grace Bush]

verified