Maybe it is better if you try to explain your objectives, what do you need to achieve. ( Not sure I will be able to help! )

You could try cloning parts of a profile and keeping those updated with your own code. You could even setup your own sync server.

• https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html

However your plan seems to be to try to use a single profile for multiple different Firefox users I suspect that will not work. I would not even attempt to use a single profile for all Windows users or all Ubuntu users and certainly not share one between differing OS s ( I know that has been tried, with some limited success.)

If you wish to point Firefox at any particular profile so that it uses it you could edit the file profiles.ini or you could follow these instructions:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bypassing_the_Profile_Manager#Background
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini_file Note the choice of relative or full addresses

In a standard Windows vs Ubuntu it is worth noting Windows will use a Mozilla build and Ubuntu a Canonical build they will often not even be exactly the same versions, as the dates of releases do not match. Yes you could install Mozilla Firefox in Ubuntu but the addons will not necessarily match & the plugins will differ.

By the way if you are trying to deploy Firefox for multiple users and multiple machines look at

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locking_preferences
  • https://mike.kaply.com/cck2/ ( I am not certain that CCK2 addon is still available and useable but the site does have a download link )

John99 said

By the way if you are trying to deploy Firefox for multiple users and multiple machines look at

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locking_preferences
  • https://mike.kaply.com/cck2/ ( I am not certain that CCK2 addon is still available and useable but the site does have a download link )

Thank you for this information I learnt something new. I will take a look. However, the CCK2 support it is very expensive 499$ :(. I cannot afford such cost.

John99 said

Maybe it is better if you try to explain your objectives, what do you need to achieve. ( Not sure I will be able to help! ) You could try cloning parts of a profile and keeping those updated with your own code. You could even setup your own sync server.

• https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html

However your plan seems to be to try to use a single profile for multiple different Firefox users I suspect that will not work. I would not even attempt to use a single profile for all Windows users or all Ubuntu users and certainly not share one between differing OS s ( I know that has been tried, with some limited success.) If you wish to point Firefox at any particular profile so that it uses it you could edit the file profiles.ini or you could follow these instructions:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bypassing_the_Profile_Manager#Background
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini_file Note the choice of relative or full addresses

In a standard Windows vs Ubuntu it is worth noting Windows will use a Mozilla build and Ubuntu a Canonical build they will often not even be exactly the same versions, as the dates of releases do not match. Yes you could install Mozilla Firefox in Ubuntu but the addons will not necessarily match & the plugins will differ.

My final objective is to install the same firefox profile with all add on and customization for all the users of each system (Linux/Ubuntu, Windows). I know that I need two different "source" profiles one for Linux/Ubuntu and the other for Windows. At the moment, my previous script works well only for the administrator user of the system that executes the script and installs with success the "source" profile for himself. My scripts are doing the steps describe here http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder under Create a new profile and copy the old one over it from command line. It seems that the commands

firefoxProfile="/home/$systemUser/.mozilla/firefox"
firefox -CreateProfile "profile $firefoxProfile/m4v6pi7q.profile"

are creating the profile for the administrator user profiles.ini instead for the user whose data directory is located at "/home/$systemUser/.mozilla/firefox".

My question is: can I create a new firefox profile from command line by using the administrator user for another user in the system with data folder located in a different path (Linux/Ubuntu, Windows)?

Note: I do not want create multiple profiles for the same system user, but a new profile (with the same profile data) for different users in the system.

Edit: I tried again many times. I think that I cannot create a profile from administrator user for a different user in the system. Do you confirm this? Edit2: I also think that it could be a bug of firefox since firefox -CreateProfile "profile /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/m4v6pi7q.profile" or sudo firefox -CreateProfile "profile /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/m4v6pi7q.profile" return Success: created profile 'profile /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/m4v6pi7q.profile' at '/home/admin-user/.mozilla/firefox/m4v6pi7q.profile/prefs.js' Why is the path in the command different from the actual path used?

erotavlas said

Thank you for this information I learnt something new. However, the CCK2 it is very expensive 499$ :(. I cannot afford such cost.

No it is free. The software has been around for years from Kaply, and previously hosted on the standard mozilla addons. It is only the professional support service that is charged for.

John99 said

erotavlas said

Thank you for this information I learnt something new. However, the CCK2 it is very expensive 499$ :(. I cannot afford such cost.

No it is free. The software has been around for years from Kaply, and previously hosted on the standard mozilla addons. It is only the professional support service that is charged for.

Yes of course. Thank you for this.

You do not even need to use the command line. Just copy and paste the new profile over the existing profile. The key is to leave the profile path and name as it was.

So if the old source profile is displaying in the profile manager as

default

and the folder is

12345678.default

But the second user has a profile displaying as

default

but the folder is

87654321.default

Then the replacement folder need be renamed after it is copied so that it is 87654321.default. Or the relevant profles.ini needs to be edited to point at 12345678.default You will have multiple profile.ini files

I often mention to anyone new to using the profile manager do not use it rename or delete profiles leave them as they are once created. The profile manger changes profile names, but does not change the profile path. That gives a confusing mismatch between the profile name displayed and the name of the folder used.

If you are use the Firefox command lines all you do is invoke the profile manger functions.

If you want to use the same data you are best just overwriting individual files. Very similar to the procedure explained in

• Recovering important data from an old profile

No doubt you could use a bat file or bash script to do that automatically. (I never learnt how to use powershell that's probably the method now on Windows )

Hi, I solved with a brilliant idea. Since I need to install in many PC the same firefox profile and these PC should have only this profile, I can avoid to use the command firefox -CreateProfile "profile $firefoxProfile/m4v6pi7q.profile that is the source of the problem. I can directly move the firefox folder with profiles.ini inside plus the m4v6pi7q.profile and crash reports folders into the home folder of each user in the system. This works perfectly. I report the Linux/Ubuntu script

usersList=$(getent passwd | grep -vE '(nologin|false)$' | \
awk -F: -v min=`awk '/^UID_MIN/ {print $2}' /etc/login.defs` \
-v max=`awk '/^UID_MAX/ {print $2}' /etc/login.defs` \
'{if(($3 >= min)&&($3 <= max)) print $1}' | \
sort -u)

for systemUser in $usersList; do
	firefoxProfile="/home/$systemUser/.mozilla"
	if [ ! -d "$firefoxProfile/firefox/m4v6pi7q.profile" ]; then
		echo "Installing Firefox profile for user: $systemUser"
		sudo rm -rf $firefoxProfile
		sudo mkdir -p $firefoxProfile
		7z x -y ./firefox-profile.7z > /dev/null | egrep "p7zip|Ok"
		sudo mv ./firefox "$firefoxProfile/firefox"
		sudo chown -R $systemUser:$systemUser $firefoxProfile
		rm -rf firefox-profile.7z
	fi
done

and Windows script

$UsersList=(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount -filter "LocalAccount = True" | Select name)
ForEach($SystemUser in $UsersList)  
{ 
	$SystemUser=$systemUser.name
	# CompareTo returns 0 if strings are equal
	if($SystemUser.CompareTo("Administrator") -and $SystemUser.CompareTo("Guest") -and $SystemUser.CompareTo("HomeGroupUser$" ) -and $SystemUser.CompareTo("DefaultAccount"))
	{
		$UserPath="C:\Users\$systemUser"
		$FirefoxProfile="$UserPath\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla"
		if(-Not (Test-Path "$FirefoxProfile\Firefox\Profiles\u9w6vbcj.profile"))
		{
			Write-Host "Installing Firefox profile for user: $SystemUser"
			$LocalProfile="$UserPath\AppData\Local\Mozilla"
			if(Test-Path $LocalProfile)
			{
				Remove-Item "$LocalProfile\*" -recurse -force
			}
			
			if(Test-Path $FirefoxProfile)
			{
				Remove-Item "$FirefoxProfile\*" -recurse -force
			}
			
			New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$FirefoxProfile\Firefox"

			& "$ProgramsPath\7-Zip\7z.exe" x -y .\firefox-profile.7z
			move ".\Firefox\*" "$FirefoxProfile\Firefox" -force
			icacls "$FirefoxProfile" /reset /t /c /q  
			Remove-Item .\firefox-profile.7z
		} 
	}
}

Note that Firefox uses a second location in "~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/" that is used for the disk cache. If you only move the main Firefox profile folder then you still would have the other part left in the location in root where the profile got created.

cor-el said

Note that Firefox uses a second location in "~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/" that is used for the disk cache. If you only move the main Firefox profile folder then you still would have the other part left in the location in root where the profile got created.

Yes, but this folder is only for cache. The main folder is ~/.mozilla/firefox/. The profile works even without the cache whereas the opposite is not true.