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Automate profile migration during automated upgrade

JohnVee
JohnVee
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We use Firefox ESR in our enterprise and have been using 32bit for a very long time even though we have all Windows 64 bit OSs, we are now attempting to move from Firefox 68.x ESR 32bit to Firefox 78.x ESR 64bit. The issue we are seeing is the Firefox profile does not automatically get picked up after the upgrade has taken place, our process is to uninstall the previous version and then install the new version. We know we can recover the profile by opening the browser and going to about:profiles but asking a user community or thousands makes it a little difficult on our end user support. Is there a way to automate the profile move during the upgrade of the browser in this scenario? Also not that a lot of our users have more than one profile in thier user folder so if there is an automated way of doing this how can we tell which profile is their current default profile?

We use Firefox ESR in our enterprise and have been using 32bit for a very long time even though we have all Windows 64 bit OSs, we are now attempting to move from Firefox 68.x ESR 32bit to Firefox 78.x ESR 64bit. The issue we are seeing is the Firefox profile does not automatically get picked up after the upgrade has taken place, our process is to uninstall the previous version and then install the new version. We know we can recover the profile by opening the browser and going to about:profiles but asking a user community or thousands makes it a little difficult on our end user support. Is there a way to automate the profile move during the upgrade of the browser in this scenario? Also not that a lot of our users have more than one profile in thier user folder so if there is an automated way of doing this how can we tell which profile is their current default profile?

Chosen solution

Currently, Firefox links profiles to specific installations of Firefox. That's why, when you reinstall, your default profile changes.

You'll have to check to make sure that it works on your environment, but I believe you could get around this by enabling the LegacyProfiles policy before updating. That should take away the linking between installations and profiles.

You could set up this policy using either a policies.json file or Windows Group Policy.

Hope this helps.

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All Replies (1)

Wesley Branton
Wesley Branton
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Chosen Solution

Currently, Firefox links profiles to specific installations of Firefox. That's why, when you reinstall, your default profile changes.

You'll have to check to make sure that it works on your environment, but I believe you could get around this by enabling the LegacyProfiles policy before updating. That should take away the linking between installations and profiles.

You could set up this policy using either a policies.json file or Windows Group Policy.

Hope this helps.