On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 07:30:18AM +0000, RJ Johnson wrote: > When creating a new profile (on first launch or with "firefox -P"), > Firefox fails to create the > "~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/storage/permanent" folder. > > I have observed this behavior with Firefox 85, 86, and 78esr, although > more versions are likely affected. This behavior was observed on a > machine running -current. > > The two most obvious symptoms of this failure are the browser's Web > Developer tools showing no page source in the Inspector tab (non-esr) > and various error messages in the Browser Console relating to IndexedDB. > > This failure is caused by unveil. When creating a profile, Firefox > begins checking each directory in the path > "/home/<user>/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/storage/permanent" for > existence (i.e., "/home" then "/home/<user>" then ...). If any directory > in this chain does not exist, Firefox gives up on creating the > "permanent" folder. This is easily observed in a ktrace. (I did > "ktrace -id firefox -P". Search for "permanent".) Since Firefox has no > access to "/home" (despite having access to the profile folder), the > "permanent" folder is never created. > > The easiest way to fix this issue, for profiles both new and old, is to > manually create the "permanent" folder after Firefox creates the profile > for you. Once this folder exists, Firefox seems to have no more issues. > It only has trouble creating this folder initially.
That's a good finding. Someone (tm) (not me) with enough motivation should look into fixing that in the code. Looking for 'PERMANENT' on searchfox.org, the corresponding codepath seems to be around https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/quota/ActorsParent.cpp#3548 im not 100% sure at all, but *maybe* the method creating the dir hierarchy is https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/xpcom/io/nsLocalFileUnix.cpp#360 . Or somewhere else. That's a 'nice' maze.. Good luck ! Landry
