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[Closed] Crash Reporter stores reports in AppData, does not submit, does not handle restarts

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December 29, 2012 - 1:13pm
#1
Drugoy
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[Closed] Crash Reporter stores reports in AppData, does not submit, does not handle restarts

Hi.
I've noticed that whenever firefox crashes - crash dumps get saved to the '%AppData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports' folder.
I think it's incorrect, because I'm a user of a portable browser and I expect to have all the browser related data in it's portable folder.

I've used Process Explorer and found out that process 'firefox.exe' has an environment called MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DATA_DIRECTORY and it points to the '%AppData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports' folder.

Could you please make firefoxporable.exe handle that environment and make it point to '%firefox_portable%/Crash Reports' folder, please?

UPDATE: It also appears not to submit the data.

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January 1, 2013 - 11:46am
Simeon
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Bug

Could you please add a Bug with brackets around it at the beginning of your post title so it comes up in our bug tracker and gets more publicity?

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

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January 1, 2013 - 4:18pm
(Reply to #2)
Drugoy
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Done

Done

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January 8, 2013 - 3:15pm
John T. Haller
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Fixed in 18.0

This has been added in Firefox Portable 18.0. The crash directory is set to your Data\profile\CrashReports directory. That way it will work with custom profile locations and 2nd profile setups.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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January 14, 2013 - 6:34am
(Reply to #4)
Drugoy
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I've updated my

I've updated my FirefoxPortable and I re-used Process Explorer to get the environments of firefox.exe again, and it reports that the path for MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DATA_DIRECTORY is still the same.
I haven't yet crashed a Firefox (I don't know how to do that), but that's definitely not a good sign, so I can't yet confirm this bug is fixed.

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January 14, 2013 - 7:06am
(Reply to #5)
Drugoy
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I've used crashme to crash my

I've used crashme to crash my instance and crashreport appeared in %appdata%, not profile folder,
so I change the bug status from [Fixed] back to [Bug].

p.s.: I've even tried to crash with AllowMultipleInstances=false because I've noticed that in that case FirefoxPortable.exe has a correct path for %MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DATA_DIRECTORY% environment, but it still puts crash reports into %appdata% folder, instead of putting it into profile folder.

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January 14, 2013 - 9:30am
(Reply to #6)
John T. Haller
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AllowMultipleInstances is Unsupported

As always, AllowMultipleInstances is unsupported for functionality left behind. Firefox itself will not support or use the environment variable in that mode. Firefox Portable will always leave things behind in that mode. It's only for developers to use on their own machines.

If Firefox still stores it in APPDATA with the environment variable set, then it obviously doesn't use it. Where did you see it documented?

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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January 14, 2013 - 2:30pm
(Reply to #7)
Drugoy
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Sorry, I think either you

Sorry, I think either you misread what I wrote, or I misunderstand you.
I tried 2 times: 1st time ini file was the following:
[FirefoxPortable]
LocalHomepage=homepage.html
the 2nd time it was the following:
[FirefoxPortable]
LocalHomepage=homepage.html
AllowMultipleInstances=false

And I didn't say a single word that I saw something documented somewhere. I don't understand your question.
The issue is still there for me, although I've downloaded a fresh version of firefoxPortable from this site (and I imported my profile and 'firefox' sub-folder into 'App' folder).

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January 14, 2013 - 3:21pm
(Reply to #8)
John T. Haller
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MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DATA_DIRECTORY

Where did you see MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DATA_DIRECTORY documented? I don't think Firefox is using it properly if we have it set and it still stores it somewhere else.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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January 14, 2013 - 4:13pm
(Reply to #9)
Drugoy
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I didn't find any

I didn't find any documentation about that, the only issue which is most relevant to the described problem is this one.

How do you think, is it worth filing a new bug to bugzilla.mozilla.org about this issue?

And yes, I've noticed that firefoxportable.exe now has an environment MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DATA_DIRECTORY which points to the correct folder, and that firefox.exe doesn't inherit that value for that environment.
The question is: who's blame is this?

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March 12, 2013 - 6:49pm
(Reply to #10)
Drugoy
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I filed a bug and got a response

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=842209

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April 1, 2013 - 8:20am
(Reply to #11)
Drugoy
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John, is there a chance that

John, is there a chance that you'd provide a patch for firefox to fix this issue?

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April 1, 2013 - 11:14am
John T. Haller
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Disabling

Considering how insanely buggy crash reporting is, I think I will forcibly disable crash reporting in all future portable releases.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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April 2, 2013 - 3:54pm
John T. Haller
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Disabled from 20.0 on

The crash reporter is now disabled by default in Firefox Portable 20.0 and up. Upgrades are automatically set to disabled regardless of previous settings. You can enable it if you want, but it is not portable. A note to this effect is on the Firefox Portable homepage. This bug has been closed.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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April 6, 2014 - 10:46am
(Reply to #14)
Drugoy
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Uhm, newer versions of

Uhm, newer versions of Portable Firefox actually again invoking Crash Reporter.
Could comment this?

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April 6, 2014 - 11:26am
(Reply to #15)
John T. Haller
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Firefox 28

I installed Firefox Portable 28.0, opened up Options - Advanced - Data Choices. Enable Crash Reporter is unchecked. Is that not what you are seeing?

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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April 6, 2014 - 11:38am
(Reply to #16)
Drugoy
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Yes. And yet it still gets

Yes. And yet it still gets opened if a crash occurs.

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April 6, 2014 - 11:41am
(Reply to #17)
John T. Haller
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Next Start

Are you sure you don't mean the 'Firefox crashed' UI that happens on next start? Also, how are you crashing it?

If it's unchecked but still bringing up the crash reporter, then that's a Firefox bug, not a Firefox Portable bug, and not something we can do anything about on our end.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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April 6, 2014 - 11:55am
(Reply to #18)
Drugoy
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No, I mean Mozilla Crash

No, I mean Mozilla Crash Reporter. I crash it as I already described above in this thread: I'm using crashme add-on.

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April 6, 2014 - 12:14pm
(Reply to #19)
John T. Haller
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CrashMe or Firefox bug

I ran CrashMe on my local copy of Firefox with the crash reporter disabled and it still came up. So, either CrashMe is creating a non-standard crash (likely as it's not an approved extension and hasn't been worked on in 4 years). Or, Firefox has a bug with the crash reporter always being enabled. Not much we can do about either situation. I added a note to the Firefox page. The bottom line is that you can't restart Firefox from the crash reporter. It's not portable.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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