Firefox can still erase a hard drive

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

Latest casualty, from the "official" Firefox forum:

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_fo ... ntId=59619
(accidently) erased files/profile.. any hope?

(I added my 2 cents there)
Alice Wyman
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steviex
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Post by steviex »

Thanks Alice.... Wonder what would have happened if he had specified the root directory of his filesystem....
I know I'd be annoyed if my /home directory went up in smoke.....
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VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

Steviex, you might want to change your great suggestion to a bug report. It might get stonewalled like all the others, but you never know. In my opinion, that is by far the best way to solve the problem, and it has the considerable advantage that it actually simplifies both code and interface.

If that doesn't work, someone could file a bug report to get Mozilla to quit suggesting that people use the Profile Manager. Or file a governance bug. It's just unbelievable that they would continue to do this.

By the way, Alice, there are many other bug reports as well, that date back for years before the ones that you cited. There's nothing special about 302087 except that that's the one that Smedberg said we could get fixed.
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steviex
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Post by steviex »

I dunno... It seems like it would end up the same as the one Ed filed....
I'm only a Bugzilla newbie, with only a single bug to my name... I think a more experienced user may be able to frame it better than me...

At least the last incident is on SUMO, where they may take more notice....
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LoudNoise
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Post by LoudNoise »

From what I have seen this has actually happened to a number of people. It might be worth listing the folks it has happened to, along with a link to the report, in this thread and, maybe, in one of the bugs.
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

This one's still open:

Bug 273729 – Profile removal caused data loss by deleting files in use and not created by program.
(Reported: 2004-12-08 07:01 PDT by Jestre)

Status: NEW
Severity: critical
Keywords: dataloss
Product: Core

Benjamin Smedberg [:bs] (bsmedberg) away until 20-May 2005-01-12 03:16:56 PDT

I'm inclined to WONTFIX this. Mozilla/Firefox "own" their profile folder, and
there shouldn't be any foreign files there in the first place.


Comment #3 [reply] Jestre 2005-01-12 07:08:32 PDT

(In reply to comment #2)
> I'm inclined to WONTFIX this. Mozilla/Firefox "own" their profile folder, and
> there shouldn't be any foreign files there in the first place.

If Mozilla/Firefox "owns" their profile folder then it must confirm this upon
creation.
The the profile creation code should verify that the directory does not exist
and create it or verify that an existing directory is empty.
Profile creation should be inhibited otherwise.
This would eliminate the posibility of erasing pre-exisitng data.


Modified: 2008-02-02 06:51:43 PDT ---> Depends on 302087 --??? (Good luck!)

I'm disgusted with all of it.
Alice Wyman
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the-edmeister
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Post by the-edmeister »

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_fo ... ntId=59619
That crap has been happening for almost 4 years now. Bug after Bug has been filed, and still nothing has been done to truly fix it; a few band-aids have been applied to "warn" users about what is gonna happen, but the simple matter is that inexperienced users are still doing stupid actions like that (placing their Profile on the "desktop" or in "My Documents") and they are destroying a lot more than their Firefox data files.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302087#c3
If that was truly the case, the "developer" would need command line code to be able to delete a Profile or relocate it thru the Profile Manager, not be able use a stinking button that's there for the "normal user" and "advanced normal user" too.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270705#c6
We're too "simple" to count.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270705#c12
We're wasting our time even discussing how to fix it, our "opinion" doesn't count for squat.

steviex wrote:At least the last incident is on SUMO, where they may take more notice....
Yeah, maybe when pigs start to fly, they'll take notice and fix it.
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rom2
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Post by rom2 »

Get this published on a prominent site, and this bug will probably get addressed.
VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

Well, lack of bug reports is certainly not the problem here, although it is good to have the correct and best solution(s) documented in bug reports. This will only be fixed if there is some other change. Don't be too timid, now. For your information:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Module_Owners_A ... nce_Module
360gurl70s
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Post by 360gurl70s »

has there been cases where drives has really been erased? how many are recorded and proven facts?
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steviex
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Post by steviex »

Well the guy Alice linked to at the top of the page had his Desktop erased... If he had made the root directory of his C drive the profile location by accident, Firefox might start merrily erasing his Operating System....

At least on Linux, you can only do that sort of thing if you were root, which is not recommended (and is dangerous unless you really know what you are doing), but many Windows users run as Administrator, and have full system access....
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

Someone should either edit this article, or remove it from the kb.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Files_created_on_startup

The first paragraph is dangerous IMO, and only late in the article are the warnings issued.
Many will read the first part and seeing what they want will discard the rest and then get into trouble.

I don't think it should be telling folks to install to the Desktop.
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

Common cases include loss of My Documents or the Desktop. People have speculated what would happen if a Firefox profile was created in the root directory of a drive and then deleted but I haven't seen such a case.

I tried selecting a drive instead of a folder in which to create a new Firefox profile but I was unable to get either Firefox 2 or Firefox 3 to create a new profile in the root directory. I tried using my D:\ drive (second hard drive) as well as my G:\ drive (Flash drive). Firefox 2 or Firefox 3 would let me select the drive but when I completed the Create Profile wizard it created a new profile in the default location, C:\Documents and Settings\Alice\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

The fix for Bug 398434 – Provide option to remove profiles during uninstall wisely restricted deleting actual profile files and foldes to those stored in the default location, leaving files and folders for profiles in custom locations untouched:
Comment #15 Robert Strong [:rs] (do not email) 2007-10-18 15:00:28 PDT

Non relative we will not delete... patch coming up.


I think that the Firefox Profile Manager should act the same way and disable the option to delete files in non-default locations.
Alice Wyman
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

Littlemutt wrote:Someone should either edit this article, or remove it from the kb.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Files_created_on_startup

The first paragraph is dangerous IMO, and only late in the article are the warnings issued.
Many will read the first part and seeing what they want will discard the rest and then get into trouble.

I don't think it should be telling folks to install to the Desktop.


??? The article never told people to install to the Desktop. In any case, I added a big WARNING to it.
Alice Wyman
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

Good work, Alice. You're right, it won't create a profile in the root directory. I don't know whether this is by design or by accident, but we can at least eliminate that problem. There's no error message as a clue, but it ignores the request in that case.

I confess that I haven't actually tried deleting a custom profile in every possible directory. It gets expensive. It may be that the Mozilla <del>censored</del> know about this one quirk and assume we're wrong about everything.

The only patch I know of is that it no longer presents <del>the desktop</del> "My Documents" as the default custom location. They fixed that at least.
Last edited by VanillaMozilla on June 4th, 2008, 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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