this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Firefox

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I have downloaded firefox-xxx.tar.bz2 from the official site and extracted it to separate directories named firefox1, firefox2 etc. I launch Firefox using the script

#!/bin/sh

if [ $(pwd) != "/home/${USER}" ]
then
        HOME=$(pwd)
        echo "Starting firefox from ${HOME}."
	firefox --no-remote
else
        echo "ERROR. Current directory is same as the main Firefox directory."
        exit 1
fi 

exit 0

Been using this way for quite sometimes now for account and cookie separation (yes I know about container extension). Is it safe to do so or should I pass something else as argument for better sandboxing. Also i noticed that, every instances run on the same version as my main properly installed firefox, Does this have something to do with the sandboxing or just a perk of auto-updates?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Since you are running firefox instead of ./firefox, I guess you are using your system-wide firefox anyway. You can just use the built-in profile manager instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

weirdly enough, when i launch ff by ./firefox --no-remote and check the about:profile, it is showing up as a separate profile in my main ff. \

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But when I check the about:profile, it indicates the root directory not as my main one. Like if my main ff is in /home/user/.mozilla then my instance's root directory is showing /home/user/firefox1/.mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I need persistancy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think you want to use profiles, not myltiple binaries. Just lauch with "--no-remote --profile-manager"

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this is about the hackiest hack you can hack. If OP says it works then great, I guess, but profiles are exactly this just built-in and tested.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think multiple binaries should even end up with the exact same profile and therefore are the exact opposite of what OP wants, actually.