FC5, Firefox, NFS /home

[Keith G. Robertson-Turner]

Dan wrote:

> I have an FC5 server which has exported /home via NFS. Client 
> machines automount /home.

Using /home as a network share is inherently insecure, and for reasons
you have just discovered, doesn't work very well.

> Can multiple instances of firefox actually share a single profile? 
> Can anyone else confirm this behavour?

Firefox, and many other programs, use a locking mechanism to determine
if there is already another instance running, and (as you have
discovered) will not launch another instance if there is:

~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/lock

If you are sharing a $HOME directory among multiple machines or users,
you will invariably run into gotchas like this, and with many other
dotfiles too.

Best solution: create a share on its own filesystem, or at least away
from $HOME, mount it, set the correct perms, set the required SELinux
contexts (if applicable), re-export, and reconfigure NFS.

IMHO FC5 desperately requires a simple tool (with GUI?) to simplify this
process, including opening firewall ports, etc. system-config-nfs just
doesn't even come close.

--
K.