CentOS - Oct 2008 - Can one invoke multiple INSTANCEs of Firefox on CentOS

I am doing some testing with XForms and I really need a separate instance
of Firefox, one that shares nothing with my primary instance that has
various reference works and web sites open, to test forms.  Is this even
possible?  I have a sense from the small bit of testing that I have done
that even with separate profiles and invoking the firefox process manually
from different terminal windows does not provide a completely separate
running instance on the desktop.

Is there a way to do this?  If so then how?

Regards,



-- 
***          E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3

Quoting "James B. Byrne" <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca>:
> I am doing some testing with XForms and I really need a separate instance
> of Firefox, one that shares nothing with my primary instance that has
> various reference works and web sites open, to test forms.  Is this even
> possible?  I have a sense from the small bit of testing that I have done
> that even with separate profiles and invoking the firefox process manually
> from different terminal windows does not provide a completely separate
> running instance on the desktop.
>
> Is there a way to do this?  If so then how?
Run them as different users with sudo.

1.  Create a few extra linux user accounts
2.  Give yourself sudo access to the other users
3.  Run sudo -H -u <account name> firefox

Notes:

I do not give my browser accounts shells.  If you are using acrobat reader
plugin .. give the account a shell and open acroread once to accept the
license, then you can change the shell back to /bin/false.  Actually acrobat
reader plugin does not work using this method.

I use this primarily for allowing myself to have browsers with different
versions of java .. so there is no java plugin in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins ..
but in ~<account name>/.mozilla/plugins I place the link to the
appropriate
java plugin.  You probably have to create the per-user plugins directory
yourself.

You will need to grant the user accounts the ability to use the X server.  Once
you are logged in to Gnome/KDE open a shell and type "xhost local:"
after login.
 There may be a way to have this persist, I've never looked into it.

If you want sound to work you will need to adjust permissions on /dev/dsp as
needed.

Hope this helps.

Barry

On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 11:26 -0400, James B. Byrne wrote:
> I am doing some testing with XForms and I really need a separate instance
> of Firefox, one that shares nothing with my primary instance that has
> various reference works and web sites open, to test forms.  Is this even
> possible?  I have a sense from the small bit of testing that I have done
> that even with separate profiles and invoking the firefox process manually
> from different terminal windows does not provide a completely separate
> running instance on the desktop.
> 
> Is there a way to do this?  If so then how?
Use the -no-remote command line argument.

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet at gmail.com>

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
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On Wed, October 29, 2008 12:05, Joe Pruett wrote:
> you can do it with firefox profiles.  start with:
>
> firefox -ProfileManager
>
Thank you very much for the hint.  I went to the Mozilla Firefox Help page
and read up on this.  However, when I run:

# firefox -ProfileManager

All I get is a new Firefox window with all of the bookmarks and history of
my standard user profile.  Am I missing something here?

-- 
***          E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3

On Thu, October 30, 2008 09:56, lists-centos wrote:
>
> you can do this by putting:
>
>   setenv MOZ_NO_REMOTE 1
>
> in your .cshrc (i'll let you figure out the bash equiv if that's
what
> you're using).
>
> and then use (e.g., in your icon's properties entry):
>
>    /usr/bin/firefox  -SelectProfile %u
>
> to start an instance.

This works.  Thank you.  The magical invocation is:

Edit ~/.bashrc or /etc/bashrc and add:

# Force Mozilla (Firefox) to prompt for profiles
# and start as separate instances for each.
MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1; export MOZ_NO_REMOTE
# Then invoke via "firefox -SelectProfile %u"

Log out and restart the desktop to get the changes to take effect for the
panel and menus. Changes made to ~/.bashrc or /etc/bashrc are picked up
with each new terminal window opened and do not require a logout or source
command if you invoke Firefox from the command line instead.

Many thanks. Now I can lose myself in the madness of model-model, view,
controller xml.... wheeeee....


-- 
***          E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3