[3452] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Fwd: Mozilla multiple instances
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Todd Belton)
Fri Sep 6 16:16:06 2002
Message-ID: <3D790D04.7030902@mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 16:16:04 -0400
From: Todd Belton <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
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To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
CC: William Cattey <wdc@mit.edu>, release-team@mit.edu
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Greg Hudson wrote:
> 2. Remove any lock files for Mozillas running in this session. But
> how would we identify which lock files are for Mozillas running in
> this session? Matching the IP address of this machine isn't
> sufficient.
Mozilla lockfiles don't just have an IP address, they have a PID. The
perl code that checks for stale lockfiles (the guts of which, let it be
said for due credit, I stole from Larry) compares IP addresses as a
necessary first step, then goes and sends a signal zero to the PID via
kill to see if it's still there. If kill returns no count, that PID is
stale.
I'm still not saying this is necessarily a good idea, just saying it
COULD be done. I'm not sure how much pain we should go to save the user
from themselves in this case; I would rather try to beat it into
people's heads to quit Mozilla before logging out.
In the case of the cache location I will probably rearrange it to deal
with this problem better, because the cache is serious stuff, can cause
Mozilla to do weird things if not handled right, and is a privacy issue
to boot if left lying around. So there I agree: Bulletproof cleanup is
vital. jweiss and I have discussed this today and I think he has a more
useful scheme that can be done without much pain. (More on that as it
happens.)
But with the "stale lockfile for different IP" situation the worst that
happens is some people get shown the Profile Manager when they aren't
expecting it. And though the dialog is cryptic to some people, it
actually does what it is supposed to do and won't let someone use a
profile that is in use. So how vital is it to sweep up Mozilla's trash
in this particular case?
