[PLUG] Running more than one Firefox instance

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

I run Firefox for weeks at a time on Gutsy (& XP2), and it gets bogged 
down and unstable, especially on sites with lots of video.  Thus far 
neither Epiphany nor Galeon are very appealing (I have no idea how 
people can handle the World Wide Ad without Adblock and NoScript).  I've 
tweaked various FF interface settings, which helps, but what I'd really 
like is to be able run multiple instances.  That way, if I kill one FF 
process or it crashes, the others are OK.

So I poked around a bit.  I *just* figured this out, so YMMV, but...

I ran:
	$ firefox -P Secondary -no-remote &
which launched a new Firefox and the profile manager, where I created a 
profile called "Secondary."  I then exited that instance, and copied my 
existing profile into the new one:
	$ cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/zzzzzzz.default
	$ cp -afv * ../yyyyyyy.Secondary

Now I can launch FF as above and get a different instance.  I can put 
long term stable stuff in one, and experiment with goofy stuff in the 
other.  I also installed a different theme and the "Firesomething" 
extension to change the "Mozilla Firefox" in the title bar in the 
secondary profile to make it possible to tell which one I'm using.


I haven't tried any of this on XP2 yet.  I guess worst-case multiple 
Portable Firefoxes 
(http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable) would work, 
though I have no reason to think the approach above won't work.


Naturally, after goofing around and finding various half-baked pages 
that had parts of what I needed, I figured it out and wrote the above. 
Then I wondered about the "-no-remote" part I'd seen and copied, so I 
Googled it.  NOW you tell me:
http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+%22-no-remote%22
http://blog.codefront.net/2007/08/20/how-to-have-firefox-3-and-firefox-2-running-at-the-same-time/

Oh, BTW: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments
	no-remote	Enables Firefox to run with multiple profiles;
			used with -P. Firefox 2 and later.

Enjoy,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
Microsoft has single-handedly nullified Moore's Law.
Innate design flaws of Windows make a personal firewall, anti-virus
and anti-malware software mandatory. The resulting software arms race
has effectively flattened Moore's Law on hardware running Windows.
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