Firefox Portable version 58 on a network drive acts like its having problems reading and writing to it's own directory.
I've been successfully running firefox portable from a network drive for hotdesking reasons and because the place I work don't support firefox as an installed browser.
Symptoms with V58 are:
- It takes about 20 seconds to start up.
- Every time it starts I get an error with Restore Session. Firefox offers to restore my previous pages and tabs but doesn't do it automatically.
- Even though I've signed into sync on the previous session, I'm no longer signed in on restart.
- Most of the addons I have installed popup a tab thanking me for installing them - as if it's their first run.
- It takes around a further 10 seconds for these to appear after firefox has started.
- The window state is forgotten between runs. So if the bookmarks toolbar is set to be visible on one run, it disappears on the next.
- When I exit, any running firefox processes take around 10 to 20s to stop executing.
I've tried a clean install with no addons or sync and get all of the above problems except the ones involving addons and sync. Firefox portable 57.0.4 (and below) on a network drive works as expected. Firefox portable 58 on a local drive/USB also works as expected.
Here's some crash reports from one I've been testing out for the last week: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/ae484a7f-ee3b-4c07-9542-e41fa0180209 https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/06e18d8f-e75c-4f8d-bd40-302920180209 https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/11ccc549-4b2e-4084-9335-9c13b0180209
For reference, I asked this question in the portableapps.com support forum first but I've had no response from there.
Thanks, Sam.
Chosen solution
John T Haller pointed me in the right directions. Thanks to him.
It looks like the problem is with the profile folder being on a networked drive. As V57 still works fine for me I'm assuming there's a difference in the way V58 handles reading/writing to the profile that causes this.
Here are my results for reference:
Running Firefox locally:
- Local profile - Profile loads
- Network profile - Profile fails to load/save properly
Running Firefox on a network drive:
- Local profile - Profile loads
- Network profile - Profile fails to load/save properly
Unfortunately my corporate environment is locked down so I'm stuck on V.57 for the time being.
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (3)
Firefox Portable is a 3rd party build and not an official Mozilla release, and not really supported here unless anther user of "Portable" happens to know a "fix".
Sounds like Firefox Portable 58 isn't closing down completely based upon those symptoms.
I do have Firefox Portable 57 installed, using it for about 7 weeks after Quantum came out, and I didn't see those problems; haven't updated it to 58 because I installed the official version in late December and am now using that instead of Portable.
As far as this forum - https://portableapps.com/forums/support/firefox_portable - it doesn't get that much traffic these days, but John T. Haller, the creator of PortableApps, is active over there doing support; he answered some questions yesterday - Feb 8th so that forum isn't "dead".
Thanks for the reply. the-edmeister said
Sounds like Firefox Portable 58 isn't closing down completely based upon those symptoms.
That's what I thought too.
I'm assuming it's something to do with firefox itself and not the portable side of it, as this is the first version I've seen exhibit this behaviour in the 7+ years I've been running portable firefox from a network drive.
I know the portable version isn't strictly supported here but I'm hoping someone with technical experience of firefox might have some insight.
Chosen Solution
John T Haller pointed me in the right directions. Thanks to him.
It looks like the problem is with the profile folder being on a networked drive. As V57 still works fine for me I'm assuming there's a difference in the way V58 handles reading/writing to the profile that causes this.
Here are my results for reference:
Running Firefox locally:
- Local profile - Profile loads
- Network profile - Profile fails to load/save properly
Running Firefox on a network drive:
- Local profile - Profile loads
- Network profile - Profile fails to load/save properly
Unfortunately my corporate environment is locked down so I'm stuck on V.57 for the time being.