Talk:Roaming profiles - SeaMonkey

Can mozilla apps on windows machines make use of windows environmental variables? As in, use the Local Settings folder instead of the one in a Windows roaming profile?

For example, an IMAP offline store or Firefox cache doesn't really need to be stored in an online roaming profile. It can be left on the local machine since it's only a copy of the online data anyway.

How about using this:

%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla"

Instead of the current hard-coded:

d:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla"

The former doesn't appear to work, is there some magic syntax to let prefs.js process environmental variables? [above apparently written by Wkearney99]

The web page states "SeaMonkey 1.0 has support for roaming profiles via File Copy, HTTP and FTP.". However, its not clear whether this is transparent to the user. If all it really means is that you can use that browser to copy a profile thats not a roaming profile. I can't find any more information about the SeaMonkey support. If it exists (I don't use SeaMonkey) there should either be additional text about it or a link to the appropiate article.

I disagree with the statement that an offline copy of a IMAP folder doesn't belong in a roaming profile. Don't forget that the synch occurs in both directions Tanstaafl 10:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

A script to approximate roaming profiles?

Contrary to what the article says ("only the <profile folder>\chrome\chrome.rdf file and the "Uninstall" files need to be modified"), I found that some other files needed to be modified as well. I was trying to have the same profile on two Linux systems, one was at server1:/path1/username1 and the other was at server2:/path2/username2. When on server2, I use this to run firefox --

rsync -avz server1:/path1/username1/.mozilla/firefox ~/.mozilla/firefox
cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile folder>
for i in `grep "/path1/username1" * -RlI`
  do 
    sed -i 's/\/path1\/username1/\/path2\/username2/g' "$i"
  done
firefox
rsync -avz ~/.mozilla/firefox server1:/path1/username1/.mozilla/firefox

and the symmetrical thing when on server1. Perhaps this is unsafe in general, but it worked for me. Is this worthy of inclusion in the article?

How can I best approximate roaming?

This section seems to assume the user is moving between a small number of fixed machines, and there is no downside to each person registering their profile on each machine. My first thought was to suggest it be rewritten to also deal with somebody in a larger environment where there is a downside to leaving stuff behind as the person roams to the next machine, and you essentially move regularly to a almost random PC. That would seem to imply using flash drives or a file share.

Its confusing comparing http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_profiles_-_mail, http://kb.mozillazine.org/Running_from_a_USB_drive_-_Thunderbird , http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_a_profile_between_Windows_and_Linux and this article. If the roaming support in SeaMonkey is as bad as the article implies it would seem more appropriate to narrow the scope of this document to just SeaMonkey, rename it accordingly, flesh it out to talk about how to workaround the SeaMonkey roaming profile bugs and point users to other articles for how to share profiles, use the portable version of the application etc. Tanstaafl 19:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Narrow the scope of this article to SeaMonkey

^ it would seem more appropriate to narrow the scope of this document to just SeaMonkey, rename it accordingly ... etc. I agree we should limit this article to SeaMonkey... I suggest we rename it "Roaming Profiles - SeaMonkey" if no one objects. I did some minor editing in that direction. I also removed outdated Fx and Tbird 1.0.x info, added that details on setting up a roaming profile in SeaMonkey can be found in the Help Contents and I removed the comment that "full functionality is in the works for Firefox" since I found nothing to back that up. Alice 02:16, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Update:

The roaming profiles feature is extremely buggy and I suggest we warn SeaMonkey users to avoid it. I tried it out in an extra SeaMonkey 1.x profile and SM crashed at the file transfer stage when I closed it. I could no longer open SM in that profile without the "Roaming Transfer" dialog appearing and SM crashing (I tried canceling the dialog but that didn't help). Roaming settings are stored in the profile registry (registry.dat) so I had to delete the profile in Profile Manager and then recreate the profile to get it working again. An overly-large bookmarks file might have been a factor (ref) and, checking the directory on the server where I tried uploading the files, I did see that the bookmarks were only partially transferred (a little over 1MB of a 2+MB file) while the cookies, abook and other files were not transferred at all. I tried again by just selecting the cookies and address book, but then nothing happened at all, maybe because the roaming setting didn't stick after going to the Roaming User "item selection" screen? More here: Roaming Profiles - SeaMonkey Features forum which links to: Bug 313273 – 'Roaming' preferences not sticking. What I'm thinking to do is to add a warning to the article after renaming it "Roaming profiles - SeaMonkey", which I'll likely do sometime during the coming week. Alice 15:52, 15 December 2007 (UTC) P.S. I've added some bug reports to the article as well as how to fix a nonworking SeaMonkey by deleting the profile in the Profile Manager and creating a new one. Alice 02:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Article has been updated and renamed. I'd like to remove the sections on sharing a fixed profile or approximating roaming and either create a new article on sharing profile information (with links to related articles, as mentioned above) or just merge the useful information into related articles. Any thoughts? Alice 05:39, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you create a generic "Roaming profiles" article, and merge the generic information into it, linking to the articles mentioned above, and this article for the built-in buggy SeaMonkey specific functionality. Tanstaafl 20:35, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. Alice 21:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

You could also leverage Starting_Firefox_or_Thunderbird_with_a_specified_profile . I think that article should be renamed to make it more generic (its really how to specify the profile using command line arguments for users who don't have a USB drive), and have the running from a USB drive articles also link to it. I assume SeaMonkey supports that command line argument too. Tanstaafl 20:35, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to copy this to the Talk page of that article and work on it when I have more time:

I should probably make two articles by spinning off the first section to a new article on creating a shortcut to a specified profile, since that applies to all Mozilla applications. The "Bypassing the Profile Manager" and "Creating an unlisted profile" sections would then be a separate article, since Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey 1.x do not support the -profile <path> argument . Alice 21:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)