Re: [gentoo-user] Separate instances of Firefox require separate profiles
Walter Dnes wrote: I vaguely remember a while ago, somebody on this list asked about running separate instances of Firefox. I finally figured out how to run separate instances of Firefox, as ***COMPLETELY SEPARATE PROCESSES***. Namely, that you need ***A SEPARATE PROFILE FOR EACH INSTANCE***. Let's start with 2 profiles trusted and default. From the command line, execute the following commands... firefox -new-instance -P trusted firefox -new-instance -P default ps -ef | grep firefox You won't need the if you launch from a desktop or window-manager launcher. In the above example, I launched 2 instances of Firefox, and verified their existance by running ps -ef | grep firefox. So if you have some sites that you visit regularly, you can have a separate profile for each one. This has some advantages... 1) You can have totally different customized setups (including different add-ons) for each site. 2) Profiles, including cookies, are stored in separate directories. Therefore third-party cookies left by trackers when you're on site A using profile A, will not be readable by the same third-party when you're on site B, using profile B, making tracking you more difficult and less reliable... one... two... three... awww. 3) If you have a whole bunch of websites open, and one of them crashes Firefox, or hangs it so you need to kill it, you don't end up taking down all your browsers. That I think was me. Also, if you close one and it doesn't die correctly, you can use this little trick, as a script in my case, to find the process for each one that is running. ls -al /home/user name here/.mozilla/firefox/*/lock For example, on mine it returns this, name somewhat edited: root@fireball / # /root/firefox ls -al /home/dale/.mozilla/firefox/*/lock lrwxrwxrwx 1 dale users 16 Jun 22 22:57 /home/dale/.mozilla/firefox/4p9tgzd5.MOD/lock - 127.0.0.1:+28060 lrwxrwxrwx 1 dale users 16 Jun 22 22:53 /home/dale/.mozilla/firefox/ar78vn2c.default/lock - 127.0.0.1:+27753 lrwxrwxrwx 1 dale users 16 Jun 22 23:58 /home/dale/.mozilla/firefox/hmnj07pv.Greet staff/lock - 127.0.0.1:+31137 root@fireball / # Notice the process number on the end? If say I close the default but it doesn't die as it should, I can do this: kill 27753 The other processes are still running. Also, if it is dead but it didn't remove the lock file, just use rm instead of ls and remove the options of course. Hope that helps you as much as it did me. ;-) Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Separate instances of Firefox require separate profiles
On Monday 23 Jun 2014 06:33:12 Walter Dnes wrote: I vaguely remember a while ago, somebody on this list asked about running separate instances of Firefox. I finally figured out how to run separate instances of Firefox, as ***COMPLETELY SEPARATE PROCESSES***. Namely, that you need ***A SEPARATE PROFILE FOR EACH INSTANCE***. Let's start with 2 profiles trusted and default. From the command line, execute the following commands... firefox -new-instance -P trusted firefox -new-instance -P default ps -ef | grep firefox You won't need the if you launch from a desktop or window-manager launcher. In the above example, I launched 2 instances of Firefox, and verified their existance by running ps -ef | grep firefox. So if you have some sites that you visit regularly, you can have a separate profile for each one. This has some advantages... 1) You can have totally different customized setups (including different add-ons) for each site. 2) Profiles, including cookies, are stored in separate directories. Therefore third-party cookies left by trackers when you're on site A using profile A, will not be readable by the same third-party when you're on site B, using profile B, making tracking you more difficult and less reliable... one... two... three... awww. 3) If you have a whole bunch of websites open, and one of them crashes Firefox, or hangs it so you need to kill it, you don't end up taking down all your browsers. Taking this a step further I create additional one-off profile directories in /tmp, which are deleted when I reboot (this is a laptop), which ensures that tracing between sites does not happen. Note, you will also need to remove any flash cookies (LSOs) which sit in your ~/ and are not deleted, unless you have installed the Better Privacy addon. For a more pedestrian approach: rm -Rf .macromedia/Flash_Player/* -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Separate instances of Firefox require separate profiles
On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 06:02:02PM +0100, Mick wrote Taking this a step further I create additional one-off profile directories in /tmp, which are deleted when I reboot (this is a laptop), which ensures that tracing between sites does not happen. Here is more detail on my approach... 1) Generate a random 8-letter name for a directory with the command head /dev/urandom | tr -d -c a-z | tail -c 8 Let's say you got cjyqsiqd (without the quotes). 2) mkdir ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd (or whatever 8-character string you got) 3) Create directories for a template profile, plus the profiles you want to use. I'll call them profile1, profile2, etc, but in real life, you'll want more descriptive names. mkdir ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/template mkdir ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/profile1 mkdir ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/profile2 mkdir ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/profile3 ... mkdir ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/profilen 4) Create the profiles starting with the template profile. Note that there is a good reason for navigating into the profile dirs. It will become obvious later. The command is... firefox -new-instance -ProfileManager Create Profile Next Enter new profile name: (more intuitive if it matches the directory name) Choose Folder (Navigate into the corresponding folder before clicking Open) Open Exit Rinse lather repeat for all the other profiles you'll want. 5) For the next step do not delete the template dir, but delete all the other profile dirs you've just created. No, this is not a joke. cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/ rm -rf profile1 profile2 profile3 ... profilen 6) Launch firefox with the template profile... firefox -new-instance -P template ...and tweak it to your heart's content, keeping in mind what options your profiles will need. Install extensions, set font sizes, your favourite behaviours, tweak the menu bars, set cookie options, etc. And make sure to set the browser to open to a home page (more on that later). When you're finished, exit Firefox. 7) Copy your template directory to replace the profile directories you deleted in step 5. This is a lot easier than doing the same changes in several directories. The names will be different depending on what did in step 3. cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/cjyqsiqd/ cp -r template profile1 cp -r template profile2 cp -r template profile3 ... cp -r template profilen 8) Open the profiles and do the final customizations for each profile separately. The command is firefox -new-instance -P profilename The customizing includes stuff like which cookie domain(s) to accept and which page(s) to open on startup. And yes, you can get Firefox to open multiple tabs on startup. When entering the homepage to open, separate the pages with pipe signs | , e.g... http://foo.com | http://bar.com | ftp://bad.example.com/data.txt Note, you will also need to remove any flash cookies (LSOs) which sit in your ~/ and are not deleted, unless you have installed the Better Privacy addon. For a more pedestrian approach: rm -Rf .macromedia/Flash_Player/* There also seems to be ~/.adobe directory. What I do is to create *FILES* (yes) like so... touch ~/.adobe touch ~/.macromedia This blocks the creation of directories by that name. Some idiot sites will refuse to play videos in that situation. I click on the Flash button, and the video displays something like Error #2046. I have a workaround for that, namely a script ~/bin/killflash like so... #!/bin/bash rm -rf ~/.adobe rm -rf ~/.macromedia sleep 20 rm -rf ~/.adobe touch ~/.adobe rm -rf ~/.macromedia touch ~/.macromedia I launch killflash in an xterm, and then click on the video to play. Note that the video only has to start within the 20-second window. The way that linux works, you can delete a file, but any app that has it open will continue to see it, even though no other apps can. As soon as the last filehandle to the file is closed, its space is finally released. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
