papaschtroumpf Posted April 15, 2005 Report Share Posted April 15, 2005 (edited) I have lost my favorites, extensions, bookamrks, etc... in firefox I am pretty sure it's due to some kind of "profile" issue and the fact that I used firefox in a VNC session, but I'm not sure what those "profiles" are about, I just know that I have gotten some "profile in use" type of error in firefox before, but only under linux. I also know that in the past, if I used Firefox under VNC, that copy doesn't have my favorites for example. I think waht was different today is that I didn't have firefox open on display :0 (I almost always have firefox open), so I wonder if VNC grabbed my "main" profile and either screwed it up or doidn't "give it back" I knwo this is a bit vague, but it's becasue I'm confused about what's going on. Any pointers? (I think I'm running firefox 1.0 but it's hard to say because the "About" box is a little off.) Edited April 15, 2005 by papaschtroumpf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted April 15, 2005 Report Share Posted April 15, 2005 My profile is hidden and is located as follows: /home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/oc6iy54j.default/ In this directory is bookmarks.html (bookmarks) cookies.txt (cookies).....and a directory "extensions". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papaschtroumpf Posted April 15, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 15, 2005 Thanks that help, in my .mozilla/firefox I have 2 profile foldes, one called default.8nc and one called tt7dsic4.VNCUser so my suspiscion that using firefox under VNC was the cause of the problem is confirmed. There is also a profiles.ini which contains: [General] StartWithLastProfile=1 [Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=default.8nc [Profile1] Name=VNCUser IsRelative=1 Path=tt7dsic4.VNCUser Default=1 I need to find some firefox doc so I undertand how to manage profiles and select the one I want to use. for now I will try moving the Default=1 to the first profile ans see ifthat fixes it. I'm not sure why firefox has to create a new profile when I use VNC though, why can't it just use the existing one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted April 15, 2005 Report Share Posted April 15, 2005 Firefox only allows one running process at a time. So if firefox was already running on the computer that you vnc'ed into, it cannot use that profile to start a new session, the profile is locked as it is in use. There are ways around this though. This is the script I use to start firefox, all my shortcuts to firefox point to this script. What the script does, is, if firefox is running, then instead of attempting to start a new firefox session, it requests it to open a new window for the existing session using that profile. If firefox isnt running it will start a new session. #! /bin/bash firefox=/opt/mozilla-firefox/firefox if pgrep firefox-bin then echo Firefox is running. ${firefox} -remote "openURL(${*},new-window)" else echo Firefox isnt running. ${firefox} ${*} fi So it's pretty simple, 1. put this script in a file, for example, /usr/bin/firefox.sh 2. edit the firefox= line to point to where firefox is located, or if you arent sure, run "whereis firefox" or "whereis mozilla-firefox" 3. chmod +x /usr/bin/firefox.sh or wherever you put the script. 4. point all your firefox shortcuts to this instead, and you'll never get that horrible Profiles dialog again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted April 16, 2005 Report Share Posted April 16, 2005 I need to find some firefox doc so I undertand how to manage profiles and select the one I want to use firefox -profilemanager will bring up a prompt asking what profile you would like to start firefox with Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papaschtroumpf Posted April 16, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 16, 2005 thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lärs Posted April 21, 2005 Report Share Posted April 21, 2005 Another thing you should know, I do this myself :P . If you want to save your favorites to a file, just in case you're paranoid like I am, you can always go to Bookmarks->Manage Bookmarks, and click File->Export there. That way (if you use bookmarks as insanely as I do) you at least won't lose your bookmarks if this problem ever happens again. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papaschtroumpf Posted April 29, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2005 Firefox only allows one running process at a time. So if firefox was already running on the computer that you vnc'ed into, it cannot use that profile to start a new session, the profile is locked as it is in use. There are ways around this though. This is the script I use to start firefox, all my shortcuts to firefox point to this script. What the script does, is, if firefox is running, then instead of attempting to start a new firefox session, it requests it to open a new window for the existing session using that profile. If firefox isnt running it will start a new session. #! /bin/bash firefox=/opt/mozilla-firefox/firefox if pgrep firefox-bin then echo Firefox is running. ${firefox} -remote "openURL(${*},new-window)" else echo Firefox isnt running. ${firefox} ${*} fi So it's pretty simple, 1. put this script in a file, for example, /usr/bin/firefox.sh 2. edit the firefox= line to point to where firefox is located, or if you arent sure, run "whereis firefox" or "whereis mozilla-firefox" 3. chmod +x /usr/bin/firefox.sh or wherever you put the script. 4. point all your firefox shortcuts to this instead, and you'll never get that horrible Profiles dialog again. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> When I connect to a VNC session on display :1 and run the script it identifies the fact that firefox is already running (on display :0) but I get a "Error: No running window found" error message. Seems that you can't use -remote accross displays? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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