Your profile is your identity in Mozilla. Your profile contains your bookmarks, mail and mail account settings, saved passwords, address book, security certificates and preferences.
You may have multiple Mozilla profiles on one computer, for example, to separate your home and work Web surfing activities, or for each of your family members sharing your computer.
Do not share a profile with Netscape 6 or 7. Sharing profiles between different versions of Mozilla can lead to profile corruption
Note even if you uninstall a previous copy of Mozilla or Netscape, the old profile will still be there until you remove its folder. Be sure to create a fresh profile when you install a new version of Mozilla.
You may set up new profiles from the Profile Manager:
On Windows, open the Start menu and choose Programs, then Mozilla, then Profile Manager. Or you can run mozilla -profilemanager from the command-line window.
On Mac OS X, hold down the Option key and double click the Mozilla icon.
On Linux or Unix, open a shell prompt, cd to the Mozilla
program directory and enter mozilla -profilemanager
The location of a profile has three elements: the BASE, its NAME, and its SALT (xxxxxxxx.slt). For example,
| C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\ | John Smith\ | lm34qgkq.slt |
| base profile directory | name | salt |
The BASE profile directory houses the profile registry (Registry.dat) file. The BASE directory depends on the system settings, as will be described later.
When you create a new profile, you can choose a different BASE directory and NAME sub-directory to put your profile files.
The SALT is a sub-directory named with eight random alpha-numerals followed by .slt extension (see more info). When you create a new profile, Mozilla automatically generates a SALT directory if it doesn't already exist. But if SALT does exist, the Profile Manager will use it.
The following lists typical base profile directories:
Windows
On Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME (without log-in), a typical base profile location is:
C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\On Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME with login, a typical base profile location is:
C:\Windows\Profiles\[Log-in Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\On Windows 2000 or Windows XP, a typical base profile location is:
C:\Documents and Settings\[Log-in Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\Note: on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the
Document and Settings
directory is hidden twice;
to access the directory, you may need to set Windows Explorer to show
System and Hidden directories and files.
Macintosh
On Mac OS X, a typical profile location is:
~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/Linux
On Linux, a typical profile location is:
~/.mozilla/
This is called salting.
Profile data is stored in a
randomly named directory to make it difficult for malicious programs
to find profile data (see bug
56002 and
97180)
You can opt out of profile salting when you first create a profile by doing the following:
prefs.jsin the directory.
Choose Folderbutton. In the file picker dialog, choose your profile folder.
On Windows, Linux, and Unix systems, you can open open Mozilla with a specific profile using the following command line:
mozilla.exe -p <profile_name>
where <profile_name> is the name of the profile as appeared in the Profile Manager.
To open Mozilla in Quick Launch mode with a specific profile, the command line is:
mozilla.exe -turbo -p <profile_name>
Use the following script to start Mozilla:
Save the following code to a text file named mozilla.bash, preferably to a location where your system looks for executable programs (e.g. /usr/local/bin or ${HOME}/bin).
Please change the MOZILLA_EXE variable to fit your environment.
Mark the file as executable: do a cd to the
directory where the file is located and do
chmod 755 mozilla.bash
To run Mozilla with a URL, do
./mozilla.bash http://www.mozilla.org
Otherwise just execute the script
./mozilla.bash
The Profile Manager should detect and import a profile from Netscape 4.5 or later automatically while installing, except for the address book and any security certificates.
You can import your bookmarks by hand with Bookmarks | Manage Bookmarks | Tools | Import.
To move your address book, export it from Netscape 4.x as text (.ldif) and import it into Mozilla as LDIF.
Your mail files (the files with no extensions) can be copied directly from your Netscape 4 profile to the Mail folder in your Mozilla profile.
Occasionally, your browser software or your computer system may malfunction and cause important profile data to be lost. Therefore we recommand that you make a backup copy of your profile periodically.
All your user data are stored in your profile directories. If you are not sure what to back up, or if you want to back up everything, back up the entire directory content. Restoring or transport profile data will be easier if you keep the SALT and NAME directory hierarchy.
The following subsection describes how you can selectively back up your data:
Mail messages are stored in the Mail (or ImapMail) sub-directory (e.g. /Mail/pop.mail.yahoo.com/). To back up your mail messages, save the files without extension, for example INBOX. To back up filters too, save the rules.dat file. The *.msf files are index files that will be automatically regenerated if removed. Save the entire Mail directory if you are uncertain what to save.
News
News settings and messages are stored in the News sub-directory (e.g. /News/news.mozilla.org/). Your subscribed groups are stored in the *.rc file (e.g. news.mozilla.org.rc). The complete news server groupslist is stored in hostinfo.dat (e.g. /News/news.mozilla.org/hostinfo.dat). *.msf files store message summaries. To back up news, save the *.rc, *.dat, and *.msf files.
Address book
In your profile directory, save abook.mab (personal address book) and history.mab (collected addresses). If you have more than one address book, save all *.mab files.
Bookmarks
Save the bookmarks.html file.
Saved password data
Username and password data is stored in 12345678.s (the number part is random). Save the file.
Saved form data
Saved form data is stored in 12345678.w (the number part is random). Save the file.
Junk filters
Save the training.dat file which stores information for the new smart filtering system.
Cookies
Save the cookies.txt file.
User preferences
The main Mozilla configuration file is prefs.js. Save this file.
Customization files
Save user.js, chrome/userContent.css, and chrome/userChrome.css if you use them to customize Mozilla.
Normally, all you need to do is to restore with the backup copies of your profile files.
Exit the browser, and replace the relevant files in your profile
directory with the backup copies. If after restart the profile data
still appear to be lost
, you may have a corrupted chrome cache
file, in which case, exit your browser, delete the
xul.mfl,
xul.mfasl, or XUL FastLoad File
file in your profile directory, and restart Mozilla again.
Most of Mozilla profile files are in the same formats on all platforms, so it is possible to transport a profile across two different operating systems. To move a profile to a different machine:
First, make a copy of your profile data.
Copy your profile files to the target machine. The profile location must be complete (BASE, NAME, and SALT). If possible, keep the profile locations the same between the old machine and target machine. If they are different, you will need to manually edit the profile configuration file afterward.
In the target machine, open the Profile Manager.
Choose Create Profile, and then choose Next.
Enter a profile name.
Choose the Choose Folder button and navigate to the target profile location (BASE+NAME, excluding SALT).
Choose Finish.
Hint to system administrators: if you want to copy the same profile as the default to many systems with CLEAN Mozilla installations, you can skip all these steps simply by copying all contents of the profile directory, including Registry.dat.
The opening screen of the Profile Manager reappears, with the new profile listed and highlighted. If the profile locations (BASE+NAME+SALT) are exactly the same between the old and target machines, you can start up your browser with the new profile by choosing Start Mozilla. If not, you will need to edit the profile configuration file.
Some profile files are referenced as absolute path (relative to the system root instead of the profile location). If the old and the new locations of your profile directories are different, some data may be missing.
On Mozilla 1.5 or an earlier version, the mail, news, and signature files are referenced as absolute path. If your profile is from these versions, follow these instructions to correct the file references.
Exit Mozilla.
In your profile directory, locate the prefs.js file and open it with a text editor (e.g. Notepad or SimpleText). The configuration file is a list of entries like:
user_pref("<setting>", <value>);
Locate the entries for browser.cache.disk.parent_directory, mail.directory, mail.root.imap, mail.root.nntp, mail.root.none, mail.root.pop3, mail.newsrc_root, and news.directory (you may not have all of them). Delete these lines.
Save the file and open Mozilla with the profile.
Open Mail & Newsgroups (you will find that none of your backup messages are
imported yet.) In Mail & Newsgroups , open the Edit menu and choose
Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings...
In the Accounts pane on the left, navigate to the Local Folders account. On the right pane, change Local Directory to reflect the new profile directory.
In the Accounts pane, navigate to each mail account. Navigate to Server Settings and change Local Directory to reflect the new profile directory.
If you have newsgroup subscription(s), navigate to
Server Settings
for each news account. Change newsrc file
and Local Directory
to reflect the new profile directory.
Choose OK.
Exit Mozilla and then restart it. All messages should now be imported.
To update your signature files, use the Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings...
preference dialog.
See Troublshooting.
See Troublshooting.
Mozilla does not yet support roaming profiles. A roaming profiles function is under development.
For sharing mail between computers, IMAP is recommanded. On IMAP, mail is stored on the server; the mail client downloads only the message headers initially and retrieve the message bodies later (as opposed to on POP, where all messages have to be downloaded at once). IMAP mail folders can also be configured to be shared by others. Unfortunately, not all ISPs support IMAP.
If you store your mail on a dual-boot PC with Linux and Windows installed, you can share mail between the OSes (with restrictions, however):
Since Windows cannot read Linux's file system, your profile must be stored on a Windows file system. You can either use FAT32 or NTFS. If you use NTFS
In Windows, create your Mozilla profile. You must set the profile location to a custom location on a FAT32 partition.
Note FAT32 is world-readable, so hard-disk sharing may not be a secure solution.For help on creating a FAT32 partition, see Microsoft's documentation for Windows XP or Windows 2000.
Currently Mozilla does not encrypt profile data, so you should use your system's own user management facilities to restrict access to your computer account.