Opening new window with a new session

[ivegner]

I work with: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I'd like a newly opened MFirefox window to be opened with a new session.

For example, assume I have an opened window in which I'm logged in on some forum. I'd like to have one more window in which I'd be logged in as some other user on the same forum. The forum is programmed so that I have to be logged off in order to log in - it's only logical.
But as I open a new Firefox window and visit the forum, I find out that I'm also logged on in the new window! (if I'd used IE, the new window would have a new session and thus I wouldn't be logged on in the new window)

And so my questions are:
1. Is the stuff I have written above understood?
2. Is it possible to obtain my desire?
3. How should I act to obtain it?

[Zmodem]

Not sure if this is possible or not. But I do know, that most forums prohibit more than one account per person.

--cheers

[JrzyCrim]

1) Yes
2) Yes
3) This will necessitate using two separate profiles simultaneously. You won't be able to do it with the same profile.

If you don't have two profiles, you will need to create a new profile:
Go to Start > Run, enter: firefox.exe -p
Create a new profile

In order to use two profiles at the same time, this variable needs to be set: MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1

Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables > System Variables > New
Variable Name: MOZ_NO_REMOTE
Variable Value: 1
Click OK, OK, OK

Next, make two shortcuts for Firefox. Each shortcut will be used to launch FF with a different Profile. The target in the shortcut properties will look something like this:

Code: Select all

Target: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p "profile name"

You should now be able to launch two separate Firefox sessions.

[ivegner]

It is sophisticated a bit...
BUT IT WORKS!

Thanks a lot.

PS. I wonder why the program's documentation doesn't contain anything about profiles and sessions.

[the-edmeister]

It is sophisticated a bit...
BUT IT WORKS!

Thanks a lot.

PS. I wonder why the program's documentation doesn't contain anything about profiles and sessions.

I have tried that and it works for me!

Not really all that 'sophisticated' - actually very elegantly simple! The simplest I have come across in the last 6 months. The other solutions all involved creating batch files or .cmd lines.

As far as documentation - probably works differently with different OS's. Heck there has even been talk about doing away with the Profile Manager entirely.

BTW; I use W2K and have been able to have 7 different versions/installations (each with its' own Profile) running simultaneously. A 'feat' I was unable to accomplish since the 0.9 versions of Firefox came out in June.

[steve1000]

"Firefox not handling session cookies as well as IE

IE does a very good job at handling session cookies where: Any window launched from a browser window (window.open(), file>new>window, ctrl-N, ctrl-T open link in new window...)
should share the same session cookie. Any new Browser window launched from the Operating
System level icon or menu should have it's own session cookie.

This means that with Firefox I cannot simultaneously login to different accounts...as I can
with IE. "

In that thread the suggestion to avoid the session cookie problem was a link to here and to use multiple profiles.

But will I need maintain seperate Firefox profiles?

i.e., it appears that you need to setup (and maintain) all your Firefox extensions for each profile...or is it possible to copy extensions from one profile to another?

Thanks

[soundman65]

Now, here's a big question - I'm doing this (running two profiles at once), and I'd like to know if it's possible to get external links to work the same way. Basically, I'd like to use profile1 for pretty much everything. The only time I want to use profile2 is when I specifically click on the shortcut I made with the -p "profile2" command.

Is this possible? I went and messed with the file types in folder options, and added -p "profile1" and thought I had it working - clicking on a link in an external program launched profile1, so did opening an html file i had saved.

But then something happened and firefox asked if I wanted to set it as the default browser. With both profiles open, external links brought up the profile manager which is no help since both of them are already in use. I'll probably mess around with this a little more, but if anyone has any good advice, let me know!

[steve1000]

soundman65

I continued this topic at: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=223531
and it relates to problems with external links.

I was contacted by Vectorspace, User Support Moderator. He pointed to:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=215734

This thread explains a method to set MOZ_NO_REMOTE, start an application with profile manager, then set MOZ_NO_REMOTE back, all with a single batch file/shortcut.

e.g., MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 lets you start an application with the profilemanager

@echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start thunderbird.exe -p "profile name"
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

This example starts thunderbird.exe, but I think you would want to change it firefox.exe for your profile2.

[Guest]

Ok, interesting problem. I deleted MOZ_NO_REMOTE from where I had entered it. When opening firefox from the shortcut I can open multiple windows fine without profilemanager popping up, but it still comes up when I click an external link. I'm stumped. The batch file thing works perfectly, but I can't get the external links back to normal.

[soundman65]

That was me, sorry I forgot to put in my name

[steve1000]

Hi soundman65

I'm not sure of what you are doing, and I haven't actually used the batchfile...

but if you have deleted MOZ_NO_REMOTE from your environment,

you should be able to run Firefox without any link problems from a simple shortcut that does NOT set MOZ_NO_REMOTE (not a batchfile).

I suspect that you would only need to use the batchfile to set MOZ_NO_REMOTE to one, start Firefox and then reset MOZ_NO_REMOTE back to zero, when you wanted to start a second profile.

Does that help?

[Vectorspace]

soundman65: A restart of your computer might help. I remember someone else using this method having the same problem, but it went away randomly. I suggest checking Environment Variables and making sure that MOZ_NO_REMOTE has been deleted, then restart your computer.

Also, if you use this batch file method, external links will open in the most recent profile opened instead of a specific one. ANd, once you've closed Firefox completely, the next time you start it it will be the last profile opened.

[soundman65]

Thanks, restarting fixed it. I was quite confused there for a second!

[coolsti]

From this thread, and my own experiences, it seems like Firefox was not designed very well with regard to handling sessions. I have a server running several database applications, all of which require a log in. This means that with Firefox, I cannot simultaneously log in and use more than one of these applications at a time, unless I go through the trouble to set up this environment variable, and manually create additional profiles. And this would not be possible to do at all if I am using one of our laboratory computers where I don't have the administrative authority to create this environment variable.

It is amazing to me that Firefox was not designed like (the usually more troublesome) Internet Explorer, where each window opened by the OS automatically creates a new session. In this regard, Firefox is in fact a security hazard for our applications: if a user in one of our labs finishes a session but forgets to click on that log out button and just closes the browser window (a very common occurrance) while another Firefox window on the computer is still open (looking up a traffic report, for example), then any other person can get steal that user's session just by opening up another Firefox window and navigating to the application's URL. This second user would not need to log in, and would be using the identity of the first user.

So there are definitely two problems here: not being able to use two different applications requiring authorization on the same remote server simultaneously, and not killing a session when the session window is closed. Shouldn't the way Firefox handles sessions be redesigned?

[Vectorspace]

Firefox cannot log in to the same page twice, but it can certainly log in to different applications simultaneously.