FYI, this is going to break in Firefox 60. Running Firefox like this (as root in a non-root user's session) has never officially been supported, due to the risk of creating root-owned files that the user can't delete, potentially being a privilege escalation vector, etc. However, this hasn't been enforced.
Until now. There are sandboxing changes coming in 60 that will, as a side effect, break "sudo firefox"-type use. Currently the browser UI will start but fail to load anything, but that's not very helpful for understanding what went wrong, so the plan is to refuse to start and print an error message; see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1323302 ** Bug watch added: Mozilla Bugzilla #1323302 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1323302 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1174007 Title: release upgrader launches browser as root To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+bug/1174007/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
