"Profile In Use" After Crash

[Ghettoimp]

Firebird crashed on me and now whenever I load it, it pops up with a dialog asking me to choose a profile. When I try to choose the default profile, it says that it is in use. I don't want to create a new profile, because I had this happen on my other machine and now I have 3 profiles when I only need one and it is frustrating.

What do I need to do to make it so that it doesn't think the profile is in use? Is there a file I can delete or something? I am using firebird 0.6 on linux. Is there a way to just turn off multiple profiles so it always uses the same one, and doesn't care if its in use or not? I have no use for multiple profiles and would just like to skip the headache.

Thanks.

[clav]

there's a file called "lock" or ".lock" or something like that in the profile folder, iirc. just delete it

[©dn]

Code: Select all

rm -i ~/.phoenix/*/*.slt/lock

[deaconf19]

i am having the same problem but i can not find the lock file i see one that says parent.lock? is that it. and how do i get the orginal profile loaded again

[sboulema]

yep parent.lock is the one. delete that and strart firefox again and it will work again

[raj_bhaskar]

delete that and strart firefox again

Or indeed, Seamonkey

[sboulema]

oops thought it was about firefox, same drill with mozilla

[talene]

But, isn't there any way to fix it so that only one profile is used and it doesn't matter if the browser is already open? In windows, I can start firefox any number of times from the start menu or a bookmark without having profile issues. In linux, I cannot.

This is a major issue for me since we are using linux thin clients in our public computing labs. These machines are not able to create new profiles, and users get confused when the "profile is in use" error pops up. This happens frequently, as one user will minimize firefox before walking away from the computer and the next user tries to start it again from the desktop icon.

Isn't there any way around this?

[Paul]

Try this:

Create a new profile. Locate your previous profile and move everything from the old profile into the just created profile.

I'm on the Mac, but Linux should be similar. Go to this folder:

There are two solutions I can think of. I'm using a Mac but Linux should be similar. On the Mac if I have more than one profile in my home/user directory Mozilla will open the profile manager and ask which one you want to use. Delete all profiles excpet the one you want to use and the next time you lanch Mozilla you profile should lopen without seeing the Profdile Manager. If this doesn't work the browser may have lost a link to where the directory for the profile is. Try the solution below and the browser should be able to relocate your profile.

Go to this directory Mozilla/Profiles/name of your profile/(randomly generated alphnum).slt (On the Mac this directory is located in the user's Library folder(not sure of location in Linux) Back up this profile in a new directory just in case something goes wrong. Now open the folder with the filename ending in ".slt" and transfer all the files to the new profile you have just created (some files will be overwritten) remove all previous profiles. (If you have more than one profile Mozilla will open the profile manager and query which one to use.) When you relaunch Mozilla, the browser should open with your profile automatically without going through the profile manager first.

[talene]

Thanks for your well-thought-out reply, but I'm not having a problem with firefox finding the profile in the first place. The issue is that once firefox is running, trying to start it again from the menu or a desktop icon sends it looking for a profile (since its profile is currenlty in use). Since these are thin clients in a public lab, we can't prevent random people from trying to start firefox twice, and I was getting tired of trying to explain to them that the machines aren't broken just because they can't create a new profile, and indeed that they don't even need to create one anyway because the darn browser is already running you idiot! er, sorry. Got carried away for a bit there . . .

Anyway, I did find a work around for this. We're using iceWM as our window manager, and I changed the menu item for firefox to this:
runonce "Web Browser" firefox "Mozilla.navigator:browser" firefox

This way, if a firefox window exists, instead of trying to execute the program a second time, the already-running firefox window gets maximized. The profile manager doesn't get called. The users don't get confused, and I don't have to sound like a broken record, or start taking blood pressure medicine.

Problem solved. Now if someone walks up to the computer and doesn't notice that the browser is minimized, they can click on the menu item and have the browser pop up, just like they expect it to, instead of seeing a profile manager that they can't do anything with even if they wanted to.

[Denver Guy]

I have the same trouble as the initiator of this thread, except I can't locate any "lock" file to delete.

Specifically, whenever I load Firefox, it pops up with a dialog asking me to choose a profile. When I try to choose the default profile, it says that it is in use. I don't want to create a new profile, because I have a lot of passwords saved on my default.

I don't know if this is related but the problem originated after I loaded Zone Alarm Pro

Does anybody have any suggestions?

[Denver Guy]

I also use Norton Anti-Virus, it that is of any help. I also had Spy Sweeper (by Webroot) crash yesterday and it won't load. But that may not be related because Firefox worked fine after Spy Sweeper stopped working, until I loaded Zone Alarm Pro.

[birdy]

Try this as suggested:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... ile_in_Use