User-Agent: Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040213 Firefox/0.8 It appears that in order to install themes, extensions or other search engines, one needs to have access to the actual installation Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install on Linux or BSD 2. Try to add engines as a normal User 3. Try to do it as root Actual Results: If you try as user, you do not even get forwarded to mycroft. As root, everything works. Expected Results: All extensions etc. should really be installed into ~/.phoenix/ since on a well administrated system nobody except root should have write-access to Firefox itself.

With search engines I can confirm this. I made the searchplugins directory writeable in the firefox directory to get around this. See also comments I made in bug: Most extensions you can also install in the profile. The extension writer can choose what he wants to support. I'm personally in favor of doing only giving the option to install in the profile, because you do not have to uninstall firefox when extensions totally bork firefox.

The biggest problem is that this operation fails silently, at least for search plugins. An explanatory dialog box with a link to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/deepdocs/installing.html would be a decent band-aid until a real fix is possible.

I can also confirm this, with regards to adding a search engine using 0.8 under Linux. I think having the search engines added to a user's profile is the best answer, since not all users will want the same search engines in their drop down menu. However, I think it is also a good idea, like most 'normal' extension allow, for the user to either install in their profile, or install globally [and be prompted for a root passwd]. Just my $.02. /vjl/

This bug should go away with the new extension manager in 0.9.

(In reply to comment #4) > This bug should go away with the new extension manager in 0.9. For extensions and themes yes. It will only be possible to install them in the profile. AFAIK there will be no changes to the search engines, so for that the bug will remain until the search engines are also moved to the profile

The extensions/themes thing is covered by other bugs and is fixed on the branch. I'm sure the search engines piece is a duplicate of something else, it's valid though and we need to fix it but I won't be getting to it before 1.0. Patches welcome.

(In reply to comment #6) > The extensions/themes thing is covered by other bugs and is fixed on the branch. > I'm sure the search engines piece is a duplicate of something else, it's valid > though and we need to fix it but I won't be getting to it before 1.0. Patches > welcome. searchplugins piece is duplicate of this one : http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/votes.cgi?action=show_bug&bug_id=123315

(In reply to comment #6) > The extensions/themes thing is covered by other bugs and is fixed on the branch. > I'm sure the search engines piece is a duplicate of something else, it's valid > though and we need to fix it but I won't be getting to it before 1.0. Patches > welcome. searchplugins piece is duplicate of this one : http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123315

This bug can be resolved as a duplicate of bug #123315 The theme / extension part of this bug has been solved in FF 0.9. So only the search engine part needs to be resolved and that is bug #123315

Agreed. The solution to this is to install the search engines in the profile. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 123315 ***