[3508] in Release_7.7_team
Mozilla and profile renaming. (don't)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Wed Sep 18 16:51:14 2002
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 16:51:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: <netscape-release@MIT.EDU>, <release-team@MIT.EDU>
cc: <tregan@MIT.EDU>, <thg@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.33L.0209101029290.9425-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.33L.0209181640020.872-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
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The worklist page has been updated today.
http://web.mit.edu/tbelton/www/mozilla
There is not a lot that's new; I have removed that which was old, and
added a couple of known bugs.
One of the bugs, which we will need to document SOMEWHERE, is that Mozilla
does not rename profiles well. Mozilla keeps track of all its profiles in
a non-human-readable little file called 'appreg.' Mozilla must be the only
thing that touches or changes this file ... otherwise it can't find any of
the profiles. This is why you can't just rename your profile directory by
hand.
Unfortunately the Profile Manager doesn't seem to do it right either. It
changes the information in 'appreg' *but doesn't actually rename the
directory.* D'oh!
So if, say, you have a profile called 'thg' and you tell Mozilla to rename
it to 'thg-old,' the actual data is STILL under a 'thg' directory. Then,
suppose you decide to make a brand new profile called 'thg' - after all,
you've renamed the old one to get it out of the way, right? And it puts
the new data in ... the 'thg' directory.
And then Bad Things Happen.
So: Renaming Profiles Considered Hazardous. Don't do it. If you want to
start a new profile and keep or duplicate your old data (bookmarks,
settings, etc), the only way to do it is to go into the Secret
8randoms.slt directory and move or copy those files by hand.
Why am I not too upset? Because this does not affect the majority of users
(who have only one profile, let Mozilla be the only one who touches it, et
cetera). It mostly affects the "power-users" - like, say, the people on
this list. So consider yourself warned.
On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, t. belton wrote:
> In terms of Mozilla 'going public,' I'm finished - well, I'm as finished
> as I can reasonably get for now. It is clear that we have some ongoing
> issues which are not as clean as we'd like. Some of them will have to be
> solved by careful documentation/instructions for the time being:
>
> 1. Certificate cleanup and the need to get new ones. I have written a page
> on this to help you tell other people how to do it. I don't advise giving
> my page to users directly.
>
> 2. Configuring IMAP mail. I'd have liked to have made it simpler, but
> there wasn't a way. Again, I have a document, and again, it's really meant
> for the people advising end users, not end users themselves.
>
> 3. I am not thrilled with Mozilla's Javascript handling. The new Java
> environment I added last night may fix some of the glitches we've been
> seeing, or it may not. At this point, if the new Java doesn't fix it, I
> don't know anything that does (short of waiting for Mozilla to fix it
> themselves). The SAPweb problems on Mozilla have workarounds, but I am
> still investigating their extent.
>
> I still have two documents missing, one on preferences and profiles, one
> on multiple copies/remote operation. I just ran out of time. I'll try to
> finish them today, but my desk time today is limited due to a doctor's
> appointment and other commitments. That's why I was here last night doing
> a final push to make sure a couple of issues (cache and lockout handling,
> new JRE) were properly fixed - I knew today would be kind of a loss for
> me.
>
> The next step for 'going public' - beyond making people aware that it's
> there to use - is for the Athena desktop to change to reflect it. For a
> lot of users, it's not there until the panel button launches it! I'll
> discuss that process with Greg and other release-team members on Wednesday
> afternoon at our meeting.
>
> Please continue to pass along any test results, user complaints, et cetera
> as I will continue to apply fixes when and where I can.
>
> - Todd
>
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