[solved] Creating two profiles in standalone Zotero creates two profiles in Firefox too

Xavierstuvw

I am using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and standalone Zotero 5.0.80

I have created two Zotero profiles following https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/multiple_profiles. These two profiles are located in two custom directories. I can start them independently following https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/multiple_instances.

The unexpected outcome is that, when I start Firefox (70.0.1), a dialogue window asks me to choose between two profiles with the Zotero profile names.

To me this looks like an unwanted intrusion of Zotero into the settings of Firefox, and causes or will cause confusion. Any suggestion about how to safely restore the way Firefox used to work earlier? And how to avoid that it happens again?

Suggestion, directions and corrections welcome.

dstillman

If you click "Delete Profile…" on one of the profiles in the Zotero profile manager and look at the path in the confirmation dialog, does it show a path within ~/.mozilla/firefox or ~/.zotero/zotero? (You can cancel out without deleting anything.)

Xavierstuvw

In the meantime I had customized the database directory so the profiles are somewhere else. However if I create a profile from scratch, the profile info is placed in ~/.zotero/zotero

The trouble is that the second profile in Firefox is linked to my second profile in Zotero as I can see from the path, as @dstillman suggested. So, if I want to remove my parasitic profile in Firefox, I would delete the Zotero database too -- which is not good.

dstillman

In the meantime I had customized the database directory so the profiles are somewhere else.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. This is about the profile directory, not the Zotero data directory.

The trouble is that the second profile in Firefox is linked to my second profile in Zotero as I can see from the path

You're saying that if you open the Firefox profile manager and go to delete the second profile, it shows a path in ~/.zotero/zotero? But the first one is in ~/.mozilla/firefox? If you look in ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini, do you see a full path in ~/.zotero/zotero listed on the Path line for the second profile instead of just a directory name?

Xavierstuvw

Then I realise that my terminology was confused and confusing.

Re Zotero there is a single profile directory in ~/.zotero/zotero, namely 123xyz.default.
The data are elsewhere and no longer in the default ~/Zotero directory.

Re Firefox and the original profile, the dialogue window proposes to delete the profile directory in ~/mozilla/firefox/456pqr.default; for the second profile it proposes to delete the path to the data directory of Zotero, not to the Zotero profile. Indeed the profiles.ini file in the Firefox directory contains

[Profile1]
Name=(name second user)
IsRelative=0
Path=(path to Zotero data directory)

I imagine I can safely delete this entry in ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini?

dstillman

Whoa. It's showing the data directory path in profiles.ini? Do you have any idea what steps you took to get that to happen? Can you reproduce it?

I imagine I can safely delete this entry in ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini?

Yes, but that's very strange.

Xavierstuvw

Alas, I cannot reproduce it, in the positive sense of not: I have repeated the same procedure that (I thought) I followed, and this did not happen again. The only incident I can think of is that I happened to start the browser in parallel while creating the new profiles with Zotero and placing the data directories from the default ~/Zotero into my favourite path. But I cannot tell precisely when or how an alleged hickup occurred because I was assuming it was plain sailing and was paying no special attention to that. I discovered the issue after the fact.

In sum, for future readers, the text file ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini got corrupted accidentally; have a look if it contains inconsistent information and possibly edit to restore the entries in accordance with common sense. I deleted the odd entry and it worked for me. Thanks @dstillman for sparring and assisting.