Bugs :
K-Meleon Web Browser Forum
I installed from the Nullsoft installer as administrator and ran the app for the first time as a non-admin user. The non-admin user had no write privileges to the install directory and the launch failed. When I ran the app again as admin the "component.reg" file was created and the app was launchable by non-admin users.
This is bad but not truly as fatal as the initial Dr. Watson pop-up would suggest. I am not as familiar with Mozilla internals as I perhaps should be but I did manage to get K-Meleon working. I'm hoping this component.reg file isn't a per-user file. If component.reg is sensitive to user settings somehow, this bug becomes a LOT more serious as the component.reg file should really be stored in the user's homedir (probably in the "Application Data\K-Meleon\" subdir of the user's homedir)
My workaround is essentially this:
(1) Install and launch once as administrator. This has security ramifications as the default homepage is the K-Meleon homepage and Java & Javascript are turned on by default. Perhaps the first launch could do something special like bring up the preferences panel so the user can turn that stuff off if they're so inclined?
(2) Quit the app normally. By now the component.reg file has been created and probably has the right permissions (assuming you're using inherited permissions that make this file readable to all and writeable by administrator and perhaps system).
(3) Start the app as the non-admin user of your choice. Configure then quit the app.
(4) Start the app again as the same non-admin user. You'll be prompted for a user profile. Set as you wish (I use the same profile all the time and I turned off prompting so I haven't yet checked if the user profile is multi-user sane). Use the app and quit.
Now when you launch the app it'll start as you configured and you shouldn't have any crashes on launch due to this issue.
A few notes:
* Please don't assume everyone is using Windows 9x/ME when you say it's OK to run it on NT/2000 too.
* This probably affects NT users as well since this is really all about write permissions.
* The security implications for Java & Javascript are serious and shouldn't be dismissed.
The components.reg file is generated by mozilla. It's not a "per user" file, but, AFAIK, it is as "per machine" file. Since we only embed the mozilla engine, there's nothing we can do about this. At this stage, and probably for quite a bit longer, K-Meleon has no claim to being "secure", for the simple fact that we haven't had the time to implement anything.
-- Jeff
You can talk about issues with k-meleon here.
K-Meleon v0.4 Build 301 doesn't launch quite right
Posted by:
J.B. Nicholson-Owens
Date: June 05, 2001 07:57AM
I installed from the Nullsoft installer as administrator and ran the app for the first time as a non-admin user. The non-admin user had no write privileges to the install directory and the launch failed. When I ran the app again as admin the "component.reg" file was created and the app was launchable by non-admin users.
This is bad but not truly as fatal as the initial Dr. Watson pop-up would suggest. I am not as familiar with Mozilla internals as I perhaps should be but I did manage to get K-Meleon working. I'm hoping this component.reg file isn't a per-user file. If component.reg is sensitive to user settings somehow, this bug becomes a LOT more serious as the component.reg file should really be stored in the user's homedir (probably in the "Application Data\K-Meleon\" subdir of the user's homedir)
My workaround is essentially this:
(1) Install and launch once as administrator. This has security ramifications as the default homepage is the K-Meleon homepage and Java & Javascript are turned on by default. Perhaps the first launch could do something special like bring up the preferences panel so the user can turn that stuff off if they're so inclined?
(2) Quit the app normally. By now the component.reg file has been created and probably has the right permissions (assuming you're using inherited permissions that make this file readable to all and writeable by administrator and perhaps system).
(3) Start the app as the non-admin user of your choice. Configure then quit the app.
(4) Start the app again as the same non-admin user. You'll be prompted for a user profile. Set as you wish (I use the same profile all the time and I turned off prompting so I haven't yet checked if the user profile is multi-user sane). Use the app and quit.
Now when you launch the app it'll start as you configured and you shouldn't have any crashes on launch due to this issue.
A few notes:
* Please don't assume everyone is using Windows 9x/ME when you say it's OK to run it on NT/2000 too.
* This probably affects NT users as well since this is really all about write permissions.
* The security implications for Java & Javascript are serious and shouldn't be dismissed.
Re: K-Meleon v0.4 Build 301 doesn't launch quite r
Posted by:
Jeff
Date: June 05, 2001 03:23PM
The components.reg file is generated by mozilla. It's not a "per user" file, but, AFAIK, it is as "per machine" file. Since we only embed the mozilla engine, there's nothing we can do about this. At this stage, and probably for quite a bit longer, K-Meleon has no claim to being "secure", for the simple fact that we haven't had the time to implement anything.
-- Jeff
English