Upcoming Linux Web Browser Changes

Scope

This applies to users of Chrome, Chromium, and Firefox on managed Linux systems who use an account to synchronize user data. This will likely be the user’s UMN provided Google account on Chrome and Chromium, and a Firefox account for Firefox. Users who do not synchronize their user data will not be impacted and no action is required. 

Impact

Browser configuration will be transitioned between December 20th, 2024 and December 23rd 2024.

Browsers will begin storing user profiles on the local machine rather than the user’s home directory. As a result, users will have to login to their account each time they launch a browser from a new machine. This will then sync the user’s data to the local machine. This should only happen once per machine, unless that machine is reinstalled. 

Required Action

Chrome/Chromium

Make sure you are logged into your account in the browser and that it does not show as “Paused”. You can verify the synchronization status by going to Settings -> You and Google -> Sync and Google Services.

Firefox

Make sure you are logged into your Firefox account in the browser. You can verify synchronization settings by going to Settings -> Sync.

Rationale

When GUI sessions are terminated in a non-tidy way, lingering lock files from browsers can cause issues when trying to launch a browser session in the future. This is compounded on CSE-IT systems with shared home directories, since the browser may see a lock file from another system – and forcing another session when there is an active one can destroy the user’s profile.

This had a relatively low impact until recently. With the move to Ubuntu 24.04, we have found that session management is causing a lot of untidy terminations leaving many more unattended lock files. Moving the user’s profile to the local system rather than shared system would mean user sessions on any specific machine will not impact, or be impacted by, sessions on other machines.

This is a change CSE-IT has wanted to implement for a while as it also reduces the risk of data corruption.