93557 - Redirected folders makes Mozilla forget settings

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[bbrandt]

Current platform(s):

Clients:
Windows 2000 Professional SP2;
Windows XP Professional RC2

Server:
Windows 2000 Server SP2

Issue:
When a network administrator has enabled the redirected folders option(s) in
their Windows 2000 network, Mozilla fails to write/read its current
configuration correctly.

Specifically, when the network admin has redirected the Application Data portion
of a user's profile, Mozilla cannot resolve the redirected folder properly. 
Window size and position, mail client window size and position, state of the
sidebar and other such information is never correctly written or read (not sure
which) from the files in the redirected profile folder.

Supposition:
While Windows can handle redirected folders transparently, Mozilla seems to be
reading the network UNC (instead of referring to the Windows system folder -
Application Data, My Documents and etc.) by reference and letting Windows handle
the translation of folders and the caching of files.

This makes using Mozilla with a mobile computer difficult if a network
administrator enables these options in Windows 2000.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

->Navigator

Comment 2

[timeless]

reporter: your information isn't clear enough for me to decipher exactly what's 
happening (and I think I know how NT/9x work).

afaik 'redirected folders' isn't a technical term, so i'll describe how mozilla 
works and you can tell me what you'd like to see..

mozilla uses something akin to:
%USERPROFILE%\WINDOWS\mozregistry.dat
%USERPROFILE%\WINDOWS\mozver.dat
[probably the registry equivalents ...]
to store its settings.  and there's no good way to do resolved=>unresolved 
mappings. plus we currently have no relative path support in profiles (there 
are bugs for and people working on that -- specifically for the reasons alluded 
to here).

those files (well mozregistry iirc) store [resolved] paths to various 
locations, so what could we do?

here is what we're doing [in no particular order and w/o bug numbers - search 
bugzilla]
* trying to make profiles support and rely on relative paths 
[networking:file/preferences:backend]
* add a move profile option to -profilemanager 
[profile manager:frontend/profile manager:backend]
* improve unc and registry support [networking:file]

randomly giving to profilemanager, this bug is really not something we can fix 
now and covers too many things to be really useful -- for this i am sorry [and 
this is assuming i'm understanding your problem].

actually i could bug the poor guy who's working on improving the unix side of 
things.

Before i do, i should probably ask you what sort of behavior you would 
expect...

#1 Suppose I create a choose to create a new mozilla profile and manually 
browse to a directory that happens to be inside a special folder.
I use mozilla a bit, and quit.
Then I change one of the special things that points there.  Should mozilla 
[magically - guess &] follow the new special route or stick w/ the path it had 
before?

supposing it can't follow the old path, should it magically try all magic paths 
and prompt the end user w/ a guess, eg:

Profile could not be found, but it might be living in:

\\z\q\random\profile\foobarza.slt

Mozilla profiles are hidden below one level of confusion as a faux privacy 
protection measure, so if the last bit doesn't sound familiar, don't worry too 
much about it.

<that's it> <browse...> <cancel>

1. would a dialog like that freak you out?
2. would a dialog like that freak your end users out? [if you say no here, most 
of your other answers will be treated w/ some skepticism by some of the UI 
designers who contribute to mozilla's ui]
3. should we do it anyways? [their answer is probably 'no - are you crazy' - cc 
to be sure ;-)]

#2, what should mozilla favor for guessing relocation?
Environment variables
HOME HOMEPATH USERPROFILE
APPDATA ~ any of the above + Application Data
registry settings:
AppData

[random] windows api calls

fwiw, i can't even find the documentation about %USERPROFILE%\WINDOWS it's 
probably near terminal services protection of the windows dir, but it's late...

Comment 3

[basic]

[e-mail]: could you respond to timeless's questions?

Comment 4

[Keyser Sose]

Marking these all WORKSFORME sorry about lack of response but were very
overloaded here. Only reopen the bug if you can reproduce with the following steps:

1) Download the latest nightly (or 0.9.6 which should be out RSN)
2) Create a new profile
3) test the bug again

If it still occurs go ahead and reopen the bug. Again sorry about no response
were quite overloaded here and understaffed.

Comment 5

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

reopening

Comment 6

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

INVALID through lack of info. Reporter, reopen if you can answer timeless'
questions.

Comment 7

[Grace Bush]

verified