Why are web browsers (well, Netscape and its descendents) so different from all other programs?
All I want to do is run Firefox on another system on my (three machine) network and it's very difficult!
My 'main' machine runs Slackware Linux and is in the house in my office, it's on all the time so I can advertise the occasional web page etc. It's the machine that appears on the web (at least as web pages) as home.isbd.net.
I have set up another machine in the garage using tatty old hardware so when I want to get some information (thread sizes for bolts, spare parts for tools, wall plug sizes, etc.) I can do it there rather than having to go back into the house requiring cleanness etc. As I want access to the same home directory when I'm out there I have used NFS to export my home and when I log in on the garage system I have all the same files that I have on my office system.
Everything works fine *except* Firefox (well everything I've tried so far that is). Firefox won't start on the garage system because it sees the office system's Firefox lock file and says that Firefox is running already and I can't have another one. I can think of various ways around this issue (separate profile, don't use NFS but copy some files across, etc.) but really why should I have to? Just about every other program would run up a second instance without any bother at all, why does Firefox do different? Netscape was the same, it's "ancestral"! :-)
Other programs that create a lock file like this or a file with the PID in it are server type programs where it makes sense (like mySql), there having only one copy makes sense and I could use it from both my garage and office systems at the same time without hassle. With firefox though it's just a nuisance and I can't really come up with a neat solution.
To describe the problem more completely:-
I have /home/chris is the *same* file system on both office and garage computers, it's a local file system on the office computer and an NFS export to the garage computer.
I have a few files that are different for the garage computer kept in /home/chris/.garage, these are such things as my window manager configuration because the garage computer has a lower resolution display than the office computer.
I want office and garage computer firefox to share their installation and configuration so that bookmarks and other things are the same.
I just want to run firefox in the garage, but I can't!
Possible solutions seem to be:-
Run firefox in the garage with a separate profile, but I'm not sure if this works completely and it means that I have to choose a profile every time I start firefox. It also means that bookmarks etc. are *not* shared so I have to do something about that.
Shut down firefox on the office system every time I leave it, not really a sensible approach, I'll forget!
I can't think of any other ways to do it!
Oh, yes, there is another approach. Have an independent /home/chris on the garage system and have symbolic links from there to all the important directories in /home/chris on the office system. Thus firefox has a local (and thus independent) configuration/installation and I can just link bookmarks.html to the office system one to get the same bookmarks. This also has the advantage that the garage system will be more able to work without the office system being there. It's probably the approach I will take though I'm not quite sure how to keep the symbolic links up to date.