Firefox Information

Mozilla Firefox is the web browser recommended by ENS, and is installed on all the ENS lab computers. You can obtain a free copy of Mozilla Firefox for your personal computer.

Customize It

Previously, the ENS computer labs linked Firefox to a profile on your U: drive, which allowed you to save your bookmarks and other browser settings between lab computers. This is no longer the case, due to performance and other issues. Instead, by default the Firefox icon that you click on is a standard local profile, and any bookmarks and other settings you make will not be saved between login sessions.

If you desire the old behavior (where your settings are saved between sessions), there are three options:

• Use the "Firefox U drive profile" link where available. On the ENS lab computers, this link will be located in the Start Menu under "Internet".
• Use Mozilla Firefox Portable Edition.
• Use an online bookmark aggregator, like Delicious or Google Bookmarks.

Firefox Profile Errors

This error typically only applies if you use the old behavior, where your Firefox profile files are stored on your U: drive. When you try to open Firefox, you may receive one of the following messages:

"Firefox is already running, but is not responding..." or

"Your Firefox profile is already open on another computer..."

This can mean one of two things:

• You really do have Firefox open on another computer. When Firefox opens, it needs to have exclusive access to the files on your U: (or home) drive and so another Firefox session cannot also open. You can simply close the first Firefox session on the other computer or use the local profile option.
• Firefox was closed unexpectedly and the "lock" file which tells Firefox it has exclusive access to the files on your U: (or home) drive did not get removed properly. In this case, follow the appropriate procedure below.

If you are using Firefox on a Windows computer (even through a Sun Ray):

1. Open My Computer and navigate to your U: drive.
2. Browse to the mozilla folder, then the firefox folder.
3. Find the file named parent.lock, and delete it.
4. If you are unable to delete the file, contact ENS to have ENS delete the file.

If you are using Firefox on a Sun Ray and NOT Windows:

1. Open the File Manager or Command Prompt and navigate to the .mozilla/firefox folder on your home drive.
2. Find the sub-folder named with a random string of characters plus ".default" (example: jkd45adf.default) and navigate into it.
3. Find the file called .parentlock, and delete it.
4. If you are unable to delete the file, contact ENS to have ENS delete the file.

Portable Firefox

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition can be downloaded for free. Please be sure to read the support pages for Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition.

You can "install" it to any location, though a USB drive or your U: drive are your best bets. If you install it on a USB drive, you can use it at home or on other computers outside the Engineering network as well. If you install it on your U: drive, we recommend you specify U:\mozilla as the installation location.

If you'd like to migrate your existing U: drive Firefox profile to your Firefox Portable profile, please follow this method:

1. Close all other Firefox windows, then run Firefox Portable once to let it set up its data directories.
2. Navigate to U:\mozilla\firefox\
3. Press Ctrl-A to Select All files, then press Ctrl-C to Copy.
4. Navigate to U:\mozilla\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile (or wherever you installed it, such as a USB drive.)
5. Press Ctrl-V to copy. Allow Windows to overwrite files as needed.
6. Delete the file FirefoxPortableSettings.ini within the FirefoxPortable\Data\settings directory, if there is one.

When you start Firefox Portable for the first time, it's recommended that you turn off disk cache, password saving and history if you're using a flash-based portable device. You can set all of these within the Privacy tab of the Firefox Options window. Sometimes, certain profiles will cause the launcher to fail or hang. It's best to give it a few minutes to see if it's just checking compatibility and adjusting the locations of the extensions before giving up on it. If it fails, it is usually due to an incompatible extension.