Create Mozilla Profile without .slt directory
Whenever you create a new profile with Mozilla an extra subdirectory (blablabla.slt) is added. This is for security reasons. This way hackers can't take advantage of a predefined location for a Mozilla profile. For more information see bug 56002.
Anyways... Sometimes it's a pain having these .slt subdirectories added. Network administrator or when you try to sync two profiles on different PC's.
So here's the solution:
Using a Command Prompt you can easily create a new profile without adding the .slt directory. This is done using the -CreateProfile command argument. But first a bit of magic!
Let's say you want to create a profile called gemal in the directory c:\private\mail\. The full path to the profile will be c:\private\mail\gemal\
First and very important you have to create a file called prefs.js in the profile direcotory. So create the file c:\private\mail\gemal\prefs.js
Just add a few blank lines to the file. It doesn't matter what you write. It will soon be overwritten.
Now create the profile using:
mozilla.exe -CreateProfile "gemal c:\private\mail"
Complete DOS Command Prompt code
mkdir "c:\private\mail\gemal"
echo 1 > "c:\private\mail\gemal\prefs.js"
mozilla.exe -CreateProfile "gemal c:\private\mail"
Now launch Mozilla! Voila!
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13 Comments
It does work. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover getting a 4.x profile migrated without salting.
Comment by Felix Miata at August 5, 2003 05:03 PM | PermalinkDoesn't work for MozillaFirebird, either 0.6.1 or 0.7 -- a $RANDOM.slt directory appears under the specified path (e.g. c:\private\mail\$RANDOM.SLT ...
Comment by Angus S-F at October 22, 2003 08:37 PM | PermalinkIt works fine for me both under Mozilla Firebird 0.6 and 0.7. Are you sure you followed the directions 100%?
Worked this time, after I copied your three lines into a batch file and edited them. Must have skipped a step or missed something before ....
Thanks!
Comment by Angus S-F at October 24, 2003 11:17 PM | PermalinkWould this also work the same way for Linux... I'm trying to find a way to, essentially, share a directory between Mozilla Mail for windows... and Mozilla Mail for Linux...
Comment by Brandon at November 22, 2003 12:11 PM | Permalinkyes it does work on Linux.
mkdir /home/moz/test
cd /home/moz/test
touch prefs.js
then start mozilla
./mozilla -CreateProfile "test /home/moz"
and then you just get back to a prompt. then start mozilla regular:
./mozilla
and "test will be selectable as a profile.
this could be hacked into a shell script that is poor mas roaming...(download;launch;upload on exit;delete local profile) but then there's the cross platform issue yet, and plugin/helpers that are on one machine and not another...
Comment by Scott at November 25, 2003 06:46 AM | Permalink
Works great for Netscape 7 - I don't know why this isn't listed in more places! It took me forever to find... and meanwhile I've got about a thousand user accounts that need their proxy server configured.
Comment by Armand at December 1, 2003 05:23 PM | PermalinkBiggest problem with Firefox using this trick is that you have to have PowerUser or greater rights to the Win2k/XP machine -- if you have just User rights, you can't create the Phoenix/Firefox directory under %appdata% and so you can't run FireFox from a USB stick or a shared network location.
Comment by Angus S-F at June 10, 2004 01:38 AM | PermalinkCan this be done on a network drive (NFS mount and Samba share) and used between machines running Linux, eComStation, and Windows98 all using the Mozilla mail client or Thunderbird?
Comment by Gene Poole at December 5, 2004 03:39 AM | PermalinkWow.. spent an hour trying to work out how to do this. Thankyou so much for posting. There must be a lot of people who need this info. Any chance of writing to mozilla webmaster to get it posted under FAQ section there ?
I think with Linux/Win 98 creating a new profile in Linux and symbolic linking to the Win 98 "real profile" essential files (mail/bookmarks) is the best answer but this solves everything else.
Comment by Dragonfish at January 6, 2005 04:39 AM | PermalinkThank you for this hack. Now if only the Mozilla developers wise up and make it unnecesssary one day.
Comment by Jon Perez at February 26, 2005 01:04 PM | Permalinkthis mozilla firefox 3.1 beta 2 - http://file.sh/firefox+3.1+torrent.html it’s runing to slow on my computer and how do you activate private browsing yo didn’t said nothing about that
Comment by piyt at May 20, 2009 09:12 AM | Permalink
Neat trick, definitely a network admin thing.