[CLOSED THREAD] Portable Firefox

Discussion of third-party/unofficial Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey builds.
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CritterNYC
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Post by CritterNYC »

Cusser wrote:I didn't think that was even an issue with Flash memory. Are there other portable USB memory devices without this issue?


Not that I know of. All USB keys have a lifespan of somewhere in the 100k to 1,000,000 range. Some advertise longer warranties, but it's really the same internals. If you were running this from an external hard drive, you wouldn't need to worry about it. Thoughts on eliminating history and disk cache?
SilentBomber
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Post by SilentBomber »

I think it might would be a good idea.... I have a question though... what are signs that your approaching the end of a USB key's life-span?? Does it start performing bad or does it suddenly one day not work? Also, once it "dies" can it still be read from to retrieve information, or is it just totally dead??
FlashBanG
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Post by FlashBanG »

CritterNYC wrote:
FlashBanG wrote:Again, when changing computers, and drive letters are changed, firefox can sometimes freeze up.. I can never be sure when this is, but I have a 60-70% success rate with it.. I launch it from the .bat file, and it occasionally doesnt do anything, or freezes up.. I have to restart, and try again..


Any idea what's going on on your system when this happens? Firefox show up in the Task Manager? Do you notice this on a specific box (XP, 98, etc) or any? I did pull the files from a regular install of Firefox (EXE) instead of the ZIP to be sure I got the official 0.9RC build rather than a nightly. Did you notice the hanging problem with my earlier build?


Yes, I've noticed that FireFox IS in the task manager. All computers i've tested on so far have been Win XP Pro.

I have the same problem with the latest (RC) builds as well..

I noticed that firefox.exe is in the task manager(in the processes list, but not in the application list), taking up around 19k of memory (normal). CPU usage spikes up during this time (close to 100% on a fairly new computer).
After around 30-40 seconds, Firefox MAY appear on the desktop, but it is utterly useless as nothing on the browser works (cannot type in address, search bar, click any buttons). Basically it feels like a screenshot of firefox appeared on the desktop, as you cant do anything with it.

Something strange i've noticed.. If I double click the batch file twice (double click once, then immediately again), two windows of firefox launch. The first window is the unresponsive one, but the second one seems to work.. I've been baffled by this behavior, as I never know what works and what doesnt..

Regarding the extensions bug, has anyone filed anything on this? Or maybe I'll have a go at trying to work bugzilla :P
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warehauz
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Post by warehauz »

I'm using a ton of extensions, so the drive letter thing could be an annoyance (not planning on using it on other computers that often, but it could come in handy to be able to). Plus in my testing I did notice the 'useless window' FlashBanG reported - if started from a different drive letter, FireFox would come up with a blank non-responsive window (no menus, toolbars or anything working - other than the system menu/close button in the title bar).

My solution: subst :)

Works great, solving both the 'useless window' issue and any problems with extensions. Just modify your batch file before you start configuring FireFox, adding extensions etc, so it will create a virtual drive letter that's high enough/rare enough to be most likely unused on any machine you come across (I chose q:). Have the batch file start FireFox using that drive letter, and wham-bam, you've got a smoothly oiled web browsing machine on your keychain :) Any extensions you install will refer to q:, and no matter what drive letter the keychain ends up on at Aunt Susie's, the subst will map it to q: again so things will continue to work.

My batch file:

Code: Select all

@echo off
echo Starting Firefox...
subst q: \
cd q:\firefox
start firefox.exe -Profile "profile/"


Hope that helps someone! And thanks much for everyone's efforts in this thread, and espeically John Haller.
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CritterNYC
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Post by CritterNYC »

SilentBomber wrote:I think it might would be a good idea.... I have a question though... what are signs that your approaching the end of a USB key's life-span?? Does it start performing bad or does it suddenly one day not work? Also, once it "dies" can it still be read from to retrieve information, or is it just totally dead??


No idea here. It's possible you may start gettings some read errors, etc or it wouldn't be writeable. I didn't see any info about this online.
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CritterNYC
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Post by CritterNYC »

FlashBanG wrote:Yes, I've noticed that FireFox IS in the task manager. All computers i've tested on so far have been Win XP Pro.

I have the same problem with the latest (RC) builds as well..


Do you notice the problem on a fresh install? Does it only start after an extension or theme is installed? Does it only start after you've used a fresh install on one computer and then moved it to another? Sorry for all the questions, but I'd like to get this nailed down.
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BenBasson
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Post by BenBasson »

I'd probably use X, Y or Z, but that's a great solution. Thanks for sharing. Even with this added complication, it's still much more elegant than previous methods. I guess it'd be a pain to reinstall all the extensions you require, since the profile cannot be copied directly, but it's better than no support at all until this behaviour is changed to use relative paths (we really should file a bug if one is not open).
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CritterNYC
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Post by CritterNYC »

warehauz wrote:I'm using a ton of extensions, so the drive letter thing could be an annoyance (not planning on using it on other computers that often, but it could come in handy to be able to). Plus in my testing I did notice the 'useless window' FlashBanG reported - if started from a different drive letter, FireFox would come up with a blank non-responsive window (no menus, toolbars or anything working - other than the system menu/close button in the title bar).

My solution: subst :)


warehauz,

that's a nice solution to the extensions problem. I may add that batch file onto my page when I get some time later today.

Additionally, I pose the same questions regarding the hung Firefox to you that I did to FlashBanG above... "Do you notice the problem on a fresh install? Does it only start after an extension or theme is installed? Does it only start after you've used a fresh install on one computer and then moved it to another?"

And, yer welcome. Just doing my part.
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BenBasson
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Post by BenBasson »

warehauz
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Post by warehauz »

Ok, my workaround isn't as elegant or permanent as I had hoped. FireFox evidently 'sees through' the subst, even if started from "q:\firefox\" in the batch file, and really knows it's running on e:\ or whatever the USB drive actually is. It worked fine for me initially (as I had actually changed the drive letter in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management). If you've got your extensions set up, then the subst works fine (sort of like read-only for extensions). If you need to install new extensions though, you'll need to be running it from a 'real' q:\ drive. A bit of a pain unfortunately.

Sorry if I'm not making this clear - basically, for my hack to work, you'll need to set your USB drive to use the 'rare' drive letter temporarily (q: in my case). Then configure FireFox, install all extensions, etc. Then you can include the subst command in your batch file (and if you're using your main machine where q: is the actual drive letter, the subst will just fail which is fine). Then when you take it 'on location', the subst will allow you access to FireFox and all extensions, but you cannot install new extensions (or they will be dependant on drive e: or whatever the usb drive is).

So it helps a little, but isn't as much of a solution as I had hoped from initial experiments.
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BenBasson
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Post by BenBasson »

If you install all of your extensions first, you can open up profile/chrome/chrome.rdf and make the following edits... c:baseURL needs to be changed from a file:/// url to a resource:/ url.... simply replace the entire path to your profile with resource:/ as shown below.

Before
c:baseURL="jar:file:///C:/Desktop/Branch20040531/profile/extensions/GUID/chrome/package.jar!/content/package/"

After
c:baseURL="jar:resource:/profile/extensions/GUID/chrome/package.jar!/content/package/"

Note: this will only work if the profile directory is INSIDE the Firefox installation.
FlashBanG
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Post by FlashBanG »

Cusser:

bsmedberg replied to your bug, but he mentioned that your URL trick might not work (or did he? I'm a beginner to this, therefore, i might have interpreted it wrong.. I hope I did, so I can get the extensions working :P). I hope someone knowledgable enough might be able to write up a patch for this..

CritterNYC:

The problem never occurs after a fresh install, nor am I able to find any link between it and extensions/themes.. The only way for me to replicate it (with some success, definetly not 100%) is to do a fresh install on computer A, then to go computer b. click the batch file, and it once in a while brings up the unresponsive window.. You can never be sure when it's going to do it, and that's the annoying part..

Warehauz:

That's an interesting solution. I shall try it out, and post back with results, and requests for help, if needed ;) . Glad to know others are also testing :)
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BenBasson
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Post by BenBasson »

You can do exactly what I said above if your profile is a subdirectory of the one which holds Firefox.... otherwise it's not yet possible. Ideally, they should have been relative locations from the beginning, but they weren't. I'm guessing this will require some tricky patching before it'll be available as a core option, but substitution as above should be ok as a temporary solution.
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CritterNYC
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Package Revised

Post by CritterNYC »

I've revised the package to include no browser history or disk cache by default, decreasing the number of writes to the USB key (thus increasing its life). I also added a note to the page regarding Cusser's relative path extension trick.

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/
wmc
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Post by wmc »

does anyone know if modifications need to be made to install themes on the portable firefox? I installed a theme on my computer and it worked great. when i brought it to a new computer, the theme was no longer installed.
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