User Profiles

Users and developers helping users with generic and technical Pale Moon issues on all operating systems.

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MasterCATZ

User Profiles

Unread post by MasterCATZ » 2021-01-12, 01:09

how do we create user profiles with Pale Moon ?

I need multiple profiles so I can multi account with flash games

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EMH_Mark_I
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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by EMH_Mark_I » 2021-01-12, 21:37

Welcome!

Checkout ProfileManager. Launch Pale Moon from a terminal with the ProfileManager option. You can create and launch them from there. (You have to close out all currently active Pale Moon processes first.)

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palemoon --ProfileManager
An older and apparently half baked method is managing profiles through about:profiles.

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about:profiles
I recommend searching the forum too, it has many threads like this one where questions have been answered.
Last edited by EMH_Mark_I on 2021-01-12, 22:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-01-12, 22:04

about:profiles is half-baked. Use the command line switch.

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EMH_Mark_I
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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by EMH_Mark_I » 2021-01-12, 22:15

Thanks, I've updated the reply.
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Moonchild
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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-01-13, 14:29

about:profiles is newer and half-baked. ;-)
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
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vannilla
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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by vannilla » 2021-01-13, 19:21

Just out of curiosity, what is missing from about:profiles to make it fully cooked?
I don't switch between multiple profiles so I can't really make a proper comparison on my own.

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: User Profiles

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-01-13, 19:45

It is a corruption, an Australis designed in-content corruption and barely functioning pseudo-replacement of something we have had from the very start.

This should really be a target for code cleanup.. We don't need this garbage when we have the ACTUAL profile manager in the toolkit. AT THE VERY LEAST it should be relocated as a Basilisk-only component.

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2021-01-18, 04:03

Linux Mint 20 has a keystroke Alt-F2 that works like Windows' Start Menu => Run. (Dunno if it exists in any other versions or distros.) Do the hotkey and a one-line command prompt appears, where you can type "Palemoon -p" to start the Profile Manager. However this appears to work only with packages that have been properly "installed". If you manually download and un-tar a package into a folder, this trick does not work. It's like an old-school 'portable' install, which does not register the program. Of course you can always create your own desktop shortcut to launch "/path/palemoon.exe -p"

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by EMH_Mark_I » 2021-01-18, 05:23

Off-topic:
Bilbo47 wrote:
2021-01-18, 04:03
However this appears to work only with packages that have been properly "installed".
You can add the installation location to your user environment PATH. I keep applications such as Pale Moon located in "~/.local/bin/palemoon/"
Then add that to your "~/.profile" file below the rest of the other PATH conditions like.

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# set PATH to include Pale Moon
if [ -d "$HOME/.local/bin/palemoon/" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/.local/bin/palemoon/:$PATH"
fi
If your display manager fails to source your .profile on login, such as XDM then create/add an .xsessionrc file with the following.

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. ~/.profile
Devuan Ceres | XFCE4
"Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee."

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Kruppt » 2021-01-18, 17:29

Bilbo47
You can do so,
but you would need to use full path in run box to the Pale Moon executive in that case.
For example if it where installed in /usr/local/palemoon-28:
/usr/local/palemoon-28/palemoon --ProfileManager
or if it were installed in /home/$USER/palemoon
you would need to enter full path in the run box:
/home/$USER/palemoon/palemoon --ProfileManager
or if it were installed in /opt/palemoon,
/opt/palemoon/palemoon --ProfileManager

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2021-01-18, 19:18

Thanks EMH_Mark_I for the encouragement! That was very useful. Now with a bit of weblearning I have:
- a folder containing shell scripts, which is included in the $PATH at login time by .profile
- scripts that can call/execute each other, or other apps, optionally passing arguments
- single-word commands that execute the scripts

So now these Pale Moon and other apps, and their modified launches, are available from the Alt-F2 trick, or from a command line window in any folder.
"Single-word" means not-typing "./" nor any path before the command name, and not-typing ".sh" after the command name. This is done by creating a symbolic link that points/redirects execution "from" the bare command name back "to" the shell script using:

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$ cp -s ScriptOne.sh ShortCommandOne # make symbolic link instead of copying
$ ln -s ScriptTwo.sh ShortCommandTwo # make symbolic link instead of hard link
For example, typing "pm" launches Pale Moon, or "pmp" launches the Profile Manager. Yes the .sh files need the eXecute permission switched On.

To make the .profile changes take effect, you would normally log out and in again. After the first re-login, running 'palemoon' in a console window worked as expected, but Alt-F2 gave: Failed to execute child process "palemoon" (permission denied). After the second re-login, that failure went away. Not sure what the problem was.

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$alias ll='ls -alF' # List all entries, in long format, including indicator ( one of /*@=|> ) <== this line is in .bashrc
~/scr$ ll p*        # List entries beginning with 'p'
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 bob bob   5 Jan 18 11:38 pm -> pm.sh*
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 bob bob   6 Jan 18 11:36 pmp -> pmp.sh*
  -rwxrwxr-x 1 bob bob  18 Jan 18 11:50 pmp.sh*
  -rwxrwxr-x 1 bob bob  46 Jan 18 11:50 pm.sh*
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 bob bob   6 Jan 18 11:36 pth -> pth.sh*
  -rwxrwxr-x 1 bob bob 178 Jan 18 12:42 pth.sh*

~/scr$ cat pth # Dump file 'pth' to screen
  #!/bin/bash
  clear
  echo
  echo 'echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n" # emit all Path entries on separate lines, by translating from Colons to Newlines'
        echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n" # emit all Path entries on separate lines, by translating from Colons to Newlines'
  echo

~/scr$ echo $PATH | tr ":" "\n" # emit all Path entries on separate lines, by translating from Colons to Newlines
  /home/bob/scr/
  /home/bob/.local/bin
  /usr/local/sbin
  /usr/local/bin
  /usr/sbin
  /usr/bin
  /sbin
  /bin
  /usr/games
  /usr/local/games
  /snap/bin

~/scr$ cat pmp
  #!/bin/bash
  pm -p # call our Pale Moon script to start the Profile Manager

~/scr$ cat pm
  #!/bin/bash
  ~/.local/bin/palemoon/palemoon $1 # launch Pale Moon with caller's first argument, if any
  
I swear now after knowing how this stuff works on two different platforms, I could teach it to beginners much better than my CS 101 instructor in 1985, who had the same body shape and social graces as this guy
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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by vannilla » 2021-01-18, 20:12

You can always just do

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alias pm palemoon
alias pmp "palemoon -p" # the quotes are important
instead of creating files and messing with PATH.

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2021-01-19, 15:11

Sweet vannilla. Testing shows you could also include pathing in the alias-substitution string, in case the program's folder is not already in the $PATH. Like: alias p='/home/bob/.local/bin/palemoon/palemoon'
Hmm. My actual command did not include the single-quotes. The line above was pasted from the output of
$ alias # print the list of aliases in the reusable form `alias NAME=VALUE' on standard output.
The shell here is GNU bash, version 5.0.17 under Linux Mint 20.1 based on Ubuntu 20.04. What shells might support defining an alias without an "equal" sign, as in your post? With this version here, $ alias pm palemoon means # show me the definitions for 'pm' and 'palemoon', if any.

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by vannilla » 2021-01-19, 15:40

Bilbo47 wrote:
2021-01-19, 15:11
What shells might support defining an alias without an "equal" sign, as in your post?
It's a typo on my end.
I wrote it just to let you know about alias, but didn't actually check if I was following the right syntax (I don't usually write aliases if not in specific cases and it's a fire-and-forget action.)

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2021-01-20, 20:29

What is the name of the Alt-F2 trick? It's not 'command completion' because that is:
- In a console window, type three characters and press [Tab]. <== Isn't three the minimum? Like with only two characters, [Tab] does nothing, right? And this also requires having previously typed the full command in that window?

It seems that aliases are not effective inside Alt-F2, even after logging out and in again. If aliases are available only from open console windows, then that would be enough reason to not-use aliases, and instead stick with symbolic links for defining short commands.

Since command completion is a shell feature, it makes sense that Alt-F2 has no such completion.

Thankx Yo

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by vannilla » 2021-01-20, 23:15

Bilbo47 wrote:
2021-01-20, 20:29
What is the name of the Alt-F2 trick?
It's called "the program launcher provided by the desktop environment which changes from environment to environment", if I understood what you mean.
Anything it does is specific to the program being used to do what it does.
Alas, if the program used by your environment to act as a program launcher does not support aliases, then that's too bad. Maybe you can bug the developers to implement that feature?

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Re: User Profiles

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2021-01-21, 00:57

Thinking about it more, aliases are a feature of the CLI shell (bash), like commandline completion is a CLI shell feature. But like you say, a program launcher hotkey like Alt-F2 is a feature of the menuing / app-launching section of the GUI - which is completely separate from bash.

For example, X / X-Windows, Mint, and Mate (KDE? Gnome?) are all GUIs that provide mouse-point-and-click methods of opening programs and files,
as opposed to the keyboard+commandline interface of traditional CLI shells.

In 2020 Mint did yes have a hotkey to open a tiny input dialog, which can run executables on the (GUI's) path (which bash aliases are not). But in 2014 Mate did *not* have that hotkey (I guess it could have had a *different* method of opening a program by typing its name,
without going through a full CLI shell).

Apparently Synapse and "Gnome Do" are GUI add-ons that provide more features than Mint's Alt-F2 for menuing/searching/launching/opening.

I would not expect any GUI to pay attention to commandline aliases defined in .bash-aliases nor anything else from config files for bash ... unless such a thing was purposely written to do so.

Thanks again for helping me get more familiar with this Linux stuff!

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