Hello,
I used to use Mozilla on Linux and would like to turn off the profile
feature so it only has my default profile. <RANT>This has got to be the
goofiest feature for use on a multi-user system. Do the Mozilla
developers know that Linux can have multiple users or are they all
Windoze developers that haven't figured out what you can do with a
multi user S?</RANT>
When I am running Mozilla and an another app wants to open Mozilla for
something (like help) it requires that I set up another profile because
my profile is in use. I do not recall Netscape doing this.
Lately I have been using Firefox and Thunderbird to bypass this
silliness but I still would like to go back to Mozilla Suite. F & T are
K but just not quite as nice as Moz. I know I should not rant because
the developers of Moz, T, & F have done an awsome job and built a
truely killer app but this little gotcha is so anoying and unnecessary
on Linux or other Un*x.
If there is not easy fix like editing a config file would Someone
please point me to the source area where I can tweek it myself?
mozilla-general mailing list
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archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Hello,

I used to use Mozilla on Linux and would like to turn off the profile
feature so it only has my default profile. <RANT>This has got to be the
goofiest feature for use on a multi-user system. Do the Mozilla
developers know that Linux can have multiple users or are they all
Windoze developers that haven't figured out what you can do with a
multi user S?</RANT>

When I am running Mozilla and an another app wants to open Mozilla for
something (like help) it requires that I set up another profile because
my profile is in use. I do not recall Netscape doing this.

Lately I have been using Firefox and Thunderbird to bypass this
silliness but I still would like to go back to Mozilla Suite. F & T are
K but just not quite as nice as Moz. I know I should not rant because
the developers of Moz, T, & F have done an awsome job and built a
truely killer app but this little gotcha is so anoying and unnecessary
on Linux or other Un*x.

If there is not easy fix like editing a config file would Someone
please point me to the source area where I can tweek it myself?

RedHat made a patch that is called , it
does work on later versions of Mozilla and you can patch it even on
precompiled versions of Mozilla, as it does affect the startup script for
Mozilla (run-mozilla.sh ), but in that case you need to cd to the location of
Mozilla (usually /usr/lib/mozilla) and run it
patch -p3 <

Google don't seem to find this patch and I don't think you want to download a
srpm for RedHat/Fedora to get the patch, so I include it here, I hope it will
work, just be careful with line breaks that shouldn't be there.

//Aho

next line is the first line of the patch
diff -Nur
sh
2002-05-24 17:41:59.000000000 -0
500
2002-07-14 10:36:03.000000000 -0500
@@ -65,10 +65,11 @@
#
cmdname=`basename "$0"`
MZ_DIST_BIN=`dirname "$0"`
-MZ_DEFAULT_NAME="./${cmdname}-bin"
-MZ_APPRUNNER_NAME="./mozilla-bin"
-MZ_VIEWER_NAME="./viewer"
+MZ_DEFAULT_NAME="${MZ_DIST_BIN}/${cmdname}-bin"
+MZ_APPRUNNER_NAME="${MZ_DIST_BIN}/mozilla-bin"
+MZ_VIEWER_NAME="${MZ_DIST_BIN}/viewer"
MZ_PRGRAM=""
+MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM="${MZ_DIST_BIN}/mozilla-xremote-client"

exitcode=0
#
@@ -131,6 +132,18 @@
return 0
}

+function check_running() {
+ $MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM 'ping()' 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
+ RETURN_VAL=$?
+ if [ "$RETURN_VAL" -eq "2" ]; then
+ echo 0
+ return 0
+ else
+ echo 1
+ return 1
+ fi
+}

moz_get_debugger()
{
debuggers="ddd gdb dbx bdb"
@@ -349,6 +362,7 @@
## Set MZILLA_FIVE_HME
##
MZILLA_FIVE_HME=$MZ_DIST_BIN
+export XPCM_CHECK_THREADSAFE=0

if [ -z "$MRE_HME" ]; then
MRE_HME=$MZILLA_FIVE_HME
@@ -429,9 +443,46 @@

if [ $moz_debug -eq 1 ]
then
- moz_debug_program ${1+"$@"}
+ moz_debug_program ${1+"$@"}
else
- moz_run_program ${1+"$@"}
+ USE_EXIST=1
+ ALREADY_RUNNING=`check_running`
+ if [ "${ALREADY_RUNNING}" -eq "1" ] && [ -n "$1" ]; then
+ USE_EXIST=0
+ opt="$1"
+ case "$opt" in
+ -mail)
+ exec $MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM 'xfeDoCommand(openInbox)'
+ ;;
+ -compose)
+ exec $MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM 'xfeDoCommand(composeMessage)'
+ ;;
+ -*) ;;
+ *) USE_EXIST=1 ;;
+ esac
+ fi
+ if [ "${ALREADY_RUNNING}" -eq "1" ] && [ "${USE_EXIST}" -eq "1" ]; then
+ # If there is no command line argument at all then try to open a new
+ # window in an already running instance.
+ if [ -z "$1" ]; then
+ exec $MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM "xfeDoCommand(openBrowser)"
+ fi
+
+ # check to make sure that the command contains at least a :/ in it.
+ echo $opt | grep -e ':/' 2>/dev/null /dev/null
+ RETURN_VAL=$?
+ if [ "$RETURN_VAL" -eq "1" ]; then
+ # if it doesn't begin with a '/' and it exists when the pwd is
+ # prepended to it then append the full path
+ echo $opt | grep -e '^/' 2>/dev/null /dev/null
+ if [ "${RETURN_VAL}" -ne "0" ] && [ -e `pwd`/$opt ]; then
+ opt="`pwd`/$opt"
+ fi
+ exec $MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM "openurl($opt)"
+ fi
+ exec $MZ_CLIENT_PRGRAM "openurl($opt,new-window)"
+ fi
+ moz_run_program ${1+"$@"}
fi

exit $exitcode

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Christopher Jahn wrote:
archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote in news:1131164613.825946.38210
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

>I used to use Mozilla on Linux and would like to turn off the profile
>feature so it only has my default profile. <RANT>This has got to be the
>goofiest feature for use on a multi-user system. Do the Mozilla
>developers know that Linux can have multiple users or are they all
>Windoze developers that haven't figured out what you can do with a
>multi user S?</RANT>

Pointless and stupid rant.

To answer your question, you only get the profile manager when you have
more than one profile. Delete the ones you are not using, or use the -P
<profilenameswitch to open a specific profile.

That isn't true, even with one profile Mozilla wants to run another profile if
you try to open yet another instance of Mozilla.

//Aho

mozilla-general mailing list
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This is exactly the problem. I even tried blowing away my .mozilla and
netscape directories and restarted mozilla in two seperate xterms. The
first one set up a profile for my uid and the second one demanded I set
up a second profile before I could run mozilla. I wanted the second
instance of mozilla to use the same profile.

It's not so much a stupid rant but a stupid feature (bug) when used on
any Un*x system. Un*x boxes already have multi-profile since they are
multi-user and you do not have to log out to run as another user
(simply su - user2). It would be trivial to create a script that would
let the user login as another user if they wanted to change profiles.

For me the ideal is to have one default profile per uid and always use
that one without ever requiring alternate profiles. I'll look at the
patch stuff, maybe it'll point me in the right direction. Looks like
surgery may be required though (I do not and never will run Red Hat
again).

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Matt,

I am talking about Mozilla Suite on Linux. Firefox behaves correctly on
this point but I like the look and feel of Mozilla Suite better. Little
things like how the "Go" menu option works and how it is integrated
with Mail.

What I was trying to find out was how to get Mozilla suite to startup
without the profile.

It is true that on Windows you can have multiple user accounts but you
have to log out and back in as a different user. Un*x many people
can be logged in and using the same system simultaniously. For example,
my box has more crunch so I have all the stuff on my
machine. When my wife runs on her older machine (yes it's a
hand-me-down) it actually launches the on my machine (her account)
and displays it on her machine like Citrix.

Since the two systems are so different in this manner I would have
expected Mozilla to accomodate them in a way that is most appropriate
for each system.

mozilla-general mailing list
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The issue is that the feature of having different profiles is already
covered in Un*x with different users. This simply recreates something
that the S already provides, why not use it in the S? The only way
that I can see profiles used is for different users. to have different
profies. This is already there if the user logs in as themselves. I
would have to argue that the default behavior should be one profile per
UID and multi profile could be available as an unnecessary frill.

BTW: this is fixed in Firefox but I wanted to go back to Mozilla Suite
and really wanted to patch this problem before I switched back.

I was looking at the patch code J. Aho sent and I think I can hand
patch the run-mozilla.sh file.

Thanks J. this looks really helpful.

mozilla-general mailing list
mozilla-general (AT) mozilla (DOT) org

I know this is getting a bit off topic but I am curious how this works.
I have to admit that I have not owned a Windows box in 16 years but I
do tend to use them at client sites sometimes. This sounds handy.

How would several people be logged into a Win XP (for example) desktop
machine? Could they simply telnet in and run apps? I am familiar with
Citrix applications but I was under the impression that the host
machine did not actually see or manage multiple users logged into the
box as themselves.

, is this something different again. I understand that Win NT &
dirivatives are loosely based on the old Mach kernel from Carnage
Mellon and could theoretically be a true multi user as that is a design
issue for any multi tasking S. I guess I have just never seen a
Windows box used this way.

I am assuming that you are not talking about using something like Win
Server as a web server which would serve requests for many people but
is not the same as multi-user as these people are never logged into the
box.

mozilla-general mailing list
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archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
The issue is that the feature of having different profiles is already
covered in Un*x with different users. This simply recreates something
that the S already provides, why not use it in the S? The only way
that I can see profiles used is for different users. to have different
profies. This is already there if the user logs in as themselves. I
would have to argue that the default behavior should be one profile per
UID and multi profile could be available as an unnecessary frill.

BTW: this is fixed in Firefox but I wanted to go back to Mozilla Suite
and really wanted to patch this problem before I switched back.

I was looking at the patch code J. Aho sent and I think I can hand
patch the run-mozilla.sh file.

Thanks J. this looks really helpful.

No problems, I have myself used that patch since I started to compile my own
version of Mozilla (could it been around 1.3) and it has followed me when I
switched to a distro, that sadly don't use this patch in their version of
Mozilla, so I still do compile my own.

The problem ain't in the binary, it will by default use one profile if nothing
else stated, but the run-mozilla.sh script sadly does check for running
instances of mozilla and if it does find them, then force you to select
another profile.

This works fine as long as you run things on one computer, but if you share
your /home over nfs (or any other net sharing), you can't have mozilla running
on different machine as the same user (I have on top of that the problem that
Mozilla compiled on one machine and then installed on two different machine
works pretty differently, mainly setting are altered just by starting Mozilla).

//Aho

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archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
I know this is getting a bit off topic but I am curious how this works.
I have to admit that I have not owned a Windows box in 16 years but I
do tend to use them at client sites sometimes. This sounds handy.

How would several people be logged into a Win XP (for example) desktop
machine? Could they simply telnet in and run apps? I am familiar with
Citrix applications but I was under the impression that the host
machine did not actually see or manage multiple users logged into the
box as themselves.

It's more that each user has it's own virtual desktop, you need to drop out to
the login manager to switch to another user. way really access something
on a Microsoft box is to use VNC-like tool. This can't be in any way be
compared to using X Windows System in a *nix environment.

//Aho

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Thats the way I understood it as well. Two users are not using the box
simultaniously are they? You would not simply use something like su
(switch user) to switch to a new user would you? Dopping out to the
Windows login manager takes a lot of time compared to popping open an
xterm, su - newuser, and then type mozilla (7 seconds just now plus
mozilla launch time). It could take less time if I created a script
that had a yes/no option for changing to a new user before launching
Mozilla.

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Christopher,

your last point, I would have to argue that a cross platform
application should still support the platform in the manner that users
expect to use that platform.

As a solution architect that has developed in hetrogenous environments
(hardware and S) for a few years I have a slightly different
phylosophy than people who work mainly in one environment.

I tend to architect the solution in two pieces. A core platform and
then add platform specific components. The core platform should be the
largest part of the cross platform solution and the most generic. The
platform specific parts tune the application to fit the users platform
of choice more closely. This means that the application is not
consistent across all platforms it operates on but rather it is
consistent with each platform that it operates on. It also means that
the code is mostly the same with a small part that requires platform
specific tuning.

I know that the " True Environment For All Time" folks hate my view
of things but people keep hiring me to architect high end solutions so
I gotta be doing something right. course this just my phylosophical
perspective and others seem to be successful with their view points
too.

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archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Thats the way I understood it as well. Two users are not using the box
simultaniously are they? You would not simply use something like su
(switch user) to switch to a new user would you? Dopping out to the
Windows login manager takes a lot of time compared to popping open an
xterm, su - newuser, and then type mozilla (7 seconds just now plus
mozilla launch time). It could take less time if I created a script
that had a yes/no option for changing to a new user before launching
Mozilla.

As far as I know you can login the VNC-like environment as another user, but
it slows down things pretty much for both users.

Yes, making a script something like

su - $* -c mozilla

would be quite fast and all you need is to call the script with the username
and if you aren't a super user you need to enter the password.

//Aho

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Christopher Jahn wrote:
archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote in news:1131205691.837202.201580
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

>It's not so much a stupid rant but a stupid feature (bug) when used on
>any Un*x system. Un*x boxes already have multi-profile since they are
>multi-user and you do not have to log out to run as another user
>(simply su - user2). It would be trivial to create a script that would
>let the user login as another user if they wanted to change profiles.

Windows also has the muli-user feature. Home users usually can't be
bothered to set it up that way; they'd rather leave the computer alone
and have the application set up for different users.

The idea of a cross-platform application is that you create one
application that runs on a variety of platforms, not to create a
different app for every platform.

Mozilla (and the other projects in the family) already have differences
depending on what platform they run on, one of the most obvious are the new
key combinations in the *nix world as Mozilla there most often is compiled
with gtk2 toolbox (even if xlib/gtk/qt are supported), which leads to that a
gtk2 bug/feature blocks the use of ctrl+shif+c (mark all posts as read) and
therefore uses ctrl+shift+m.

IMH they should have dropped the gtk2 as the main toolbox for *nix and used
one that had kept mozilla working the same way in all S's.

//Aho

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Christopher,

It is not clueness it is the understanding that systems are different
for a reason. Each system has benifits and issues.

The issue is that all applications should behave more or less the same
for a given platform. As I understand it, you propose that every
application should completely define its behavior and if no two
application designers agreed to what the behavior should be then thats
the right way to design apps.

IMH the applications should conform to the target platform best
practices and style guides. This way all applications used would have
abour the same look and feel for that platform.

Not sure why this is a sore point. If you don't understand Unix you
should not use it. If you have a need that Unix or VM or MVS is
particularly good at solving you should learn those platfomrs. My sore
point is the clueless jerk who thinks that the platform they know is
the only important one and everyone else should conform to their
limited and narrow way of thinking. There are different platforms
because there is no such thing as one size fits all and each platform
has value or it dissapears from the marketplace (Seen a Gould or
Honeywell computer lately?). Unix is particularly good at running on
many different types of hardware. It runs on everything from micros to
mainframes and supercomputers. Windows only runs on intel compatible
procesors (not including the attempt to emulate intel on several RISC
architectures).

The application should be designed based on requirements to fit a need.
The platform is selected as part of that need. If you select a platform
to build on such that your app and S work together they should work
harmoniously.

Idiots define the app by their favorite environment not by the problem
to be solved. If you plan to write Unix apps learn Unix. If you plan to
wite Windows apps, know Windows. If you plan to write Mac apps, know
Macs. Don't try to write Windows Apps on Unix they will always be a
Frankenstein creation and impossible to maintain.

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J

Well, I'm rather fond of gtk+ and I think that when Microsoft copied
Motif they should have kept the ALT key rather than switching it over
to Ctrl. Anything with Ctrl-C in it makes me nervious as this is the
traditional kill commend even for MS-DS.

The Windows users rant and rave about Java Swing apps not being
completely conformant to the "Windows Experience" yet they expect the
rest of us to put up with their environment. If I liked Windows I would
use it. I use Linux and FVWM2 because it gives me a system that more
closely meets my needs.

TH, I put the patches in that you sent and it seems to be there. At
first I got an error:
/ Error: Failed to send
command: 509 internal error

I found that this was apparently due to me running Firefox and
Thunderbird on another desktop. I shut them down Mozilla came
right up and two instances did not require that I switch profiles or
create new ones.

Many thanks.

Best Regards
Tony Dean

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Christopher Jahn wrote:
archtdean (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote in news:1131253216.892358.174350
@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

>IMH the applications should conform to the target platform best
>practices and style guides. This way all applications used would have
>abour the same look and feel for that platform.

And that is why Windows will remain dominant. USers don't car about the
platform, they are about their programs. If they have to relearn
programs to move to another S, they won't leave Windows.

Clueless developers are the reason alternate Systems remain in
the minority. The arrogance of ignorant geeks to insist that the S
define application layout dooms the movement.

So you mean that it has nothing to do that the majority of sold home computers
comes with a operating system preinstalled and you don't have any choice to
which one should be preinstalled.

I agree that programs should be as similar as possible over different S's,
but not even Mozilla is that.

//Aho

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