Firefox continually crashing out in VDI
-
A couple of my users on a VDI (VMWare) environment are trying to use Firefox and the application loads, and is visible from the task manager (Win7), however the GUI never displays and there's no crash report. Attempting to start in safe mode using the CLI switch results in a similar behavior, though the crash is prefaced with a GUI warning about running in safe mode.
I think I've narrowed it down to a profile problem as I can login on my new profile; the VDI uses the VMWare roaming profiles configuration which is a mix of redirected folders with specific GPOs from VMWare. If I use the command firefox -P then I get the GUI to delete and create new profiles. This tool throws an error/crash report, at least, though it's nothing useful since the 'technical details' says that the crash information will be sent to Mozilla. The profile tool crashes when any action is attempted, so I can't delete the default profile, create a new one or anything meaningful.
I've also determined that if I login once with a blank profile (entirely deleted from the persona server prior to login on the VDI), Firefox will load once without problems. It's any subsequent attempt after logging out of the VDI that causes it to fail to open.
Has anyone run across something similar? My searches have turned up directions that always point to troubleshooting from within the application. Since I can't load the application, I've got to do things manually.
-
Roaming profiles? Yuck. Can the same things not be done with a login/logout script?
-
@travisdh1 It's similar to, but not actually a roaming profile. https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Persona-Management-Deployment-Guide.pdf
-
@Grey said in Firefox continually crashing out in VDI:
@travisdh1 It's similar to, but not actually a roaming profile. https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Persona-Management-Deployment-Guide.pdf
Good. My only experience with roaming profiles recently had them corrupting after only a couple of days. Was easier to just redirect user folders.
-
Can you manually delete the folders that contain the profile information for Firefox? %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on windows.
-
@travisdh1 I've done that. It made things worse.
-
I installed Firefox Portable and removed standard FireFox. Something between v32 and v42 changed the way that profiles are handled and they can't deal with data that's copied/imaged in the way that Personas/View handles %appdata%.
-
@Grey said in Firefox continually crashing out in VDI:
I installed Firefox Portable and removed standard FireFox. Something between v32 and v42 changed the way that profiles are handled and they can't deal with data that's copied/imaged in the way that Personas/View handles %appdata%.
Odd. I haven't run into this yet, I'd knock on wood, but it's all fake plastic around me right now.
