A question about Firefox and .mozilla folder

I wonder if Firefox can be made to read from another folder than ~/.mozilla?

I have installed firefox-developer-edition and would like it, if possible, to have its profiles somewhere like ~/.config/mozilla/firefox

I have already copied a profile into the mentioned folder and use:

firefox-developer-edition --profile /home/me/.config/mozilla/firefox/profilexxxx

in a terminal but it says profile not found and without specifying the path it wants always to start on profiles in ~/.mozilla/firefox.

From this site:

Firefox uses profiles.ini (and installs.ini) in the default ~/.mozilla location to find all registered profiles.

Did you try to create a symlink ?

Also, you might want to look here.

A fresh, and freely portable install to experiment with would be here.

:v:

1 Like

Thanks @anon11595408 for the reply and the links!

Unfortuanately I haven’t been able to make it by creating the symlink. Perhaps I am doing it wrong.

I’ll have a look at the portable version.

This and profiles path/folder is a different issue.
Use firefox profile creator/manager to create the new profile, where you are asked/allowed to specify path for the profile data.
This creates a new entry in profiles.ini, (as already said). I don’t think you can avoid ~/.mozilla, although I haven’t tried (I think… :smile: ). I have used a different profile successfully.

Edit: The path (~/.mozilla) is hardoded, but you can use a symlink.

Right. I thought perhaps that there might be a way but now knowing that it is hardcode (thanks for the link) I have to give up my original “plan”.

I tried symlinking but I don’t seem to get it right. I must be doing it wrongly.

Creating several profiles is not an issue. I have already quite a few profiles for the “regular” Firefox.

What I wanted was a complete separation of the folders where the profiles reside for the two browsers.

Now my regular Firefox has its profiles in ~/.mozilla/firefox: Profile1, Profile2 etc.

I went ahead and created ~/.mozilla/firefox-dev: Profile1, Profile2 etc.

Launching the browser with `firefox-developer-edition -P, I could now point the profile manager to this new locations.

So in a way, this works for having a complete separations of the folders containing the profiles for the two browsers but all under the same .mozilla.

Thanks @anon11595408 and @petsam for your support, suggestions and sharing your insight!

Let’s call it a thread! :wink:

1 Like

Maybe you misunderstood.
I would give you a personal example in PM, but you have security barriers… :rofl:

1 Like

Why not post your solution to symlink to a Ff-profile here, so others may benefit from it as well?

1 Like

To make it public, it would take me time.
When I find some, I will.

1 Like

That would be quite cool, Taktikosmou.

Giassou file.

2 Likes

Highly probable!

Removed
:green_circle:

Thanks for the support!

1 Like

My own profiles.ini, with which I have a profile with its files/folder being in ~/.confg/ (a custom project, using headless FF with a script)

$  cat .mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini | sed  's|'$HOME'|_HOME_|g'
[Install4F96D1932A9F858E]
Default=ulsxnphj.default-release-1649796956766
Locked=1

[Profile1]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=ohz779sl.default
Default=1

[Profile0]
Name=default-release
IsRelative=1
Path=ulsxnphj.default-release-1649796956766

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1
Version=2

[Profile2]
Name=wallpapers
IsRelative=0
Path=_HOME_/.config/ff-wallpapers

Look that IsRelative=0 means not relative to ~/.mozilla/firefox/ for the Path, being absolute, wherever you like.
IsRelative=1 means relative to ~/.mozilla/firefox/ for the Path, inside ~/.mozilla/firefox/ folder.

3 Likes

That’s interesting!

This is one of the entries in my profiles.ini for the :

[Profile5]
Name=TestDev
IsRelative=0
Path=_HOME_/.mozilla/firefox-dev/Test-FFDev

I’ll try this for a profile folder in .config.

Thank you so much for sharing this!

Now heading for the lab!

:test_tube: :microscope: :man_scientist:t5:

2 Likes

It could be anywhere, as it’s an absolute path :wink:

2 Likes

This helped me to figure out what my mistake was.

In my testing, putting the profile folder under another directory in for example .config (/.config/mozilla/TestProfile) wouldn’t work.

However /.config/TestProfile works perfectly.

Thanks again for your attention and support!

1 Like

I don’t find a reason for this not working, unless it is a bug in mozilla code that gets the path, confusing it with the default mozilla path.
If you try again and still fails, maybe post a bug report upstream mozilla.

You can also try changing the IsRelative value in profiles.ini to 0 .

Yes, I was surprised at it not working.

I ran firefox with -P to bring up the profile manager, it didn’t show /.config/mozilla as a location at all.

Also manually putting a profile in there and setting InRelative=0 and specifying the absolute path resulted in profile not being able to load or inaccessible. Odd.

Maybe one more misunderstanding?
There is only one profiles.ini and it’s at $HOME/.mozilla/firefox. Do your changes there.
Or it’s me this time misunderstanding… :joy:

2 Likes

Yes and no :wink:

I should have been more clear: I put a profile folder in ~/.config/mozilla
and
made the appropriate changes in ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini

Hope I got it right this time :sweat_smile:

Yes. That’s how it should go.
Unless mozilla has this in the Known Issues somewhere, it looks like a bug.
this is using the word mozilla as a profile name.

As it’s not such a problem, I guess nobody would care to report or fix it :laughing:
But, we’ve got it!!

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.