firefox snap does not work with home directories outside of /home

[Stefan Fleischmann]

Firefox version information below. I don't think replacing the deb version with the snap was a good idea. If your home directory is outside of /home (quite common for central home directories on a file server mounted via NFS or some other way for example) you cannot use Firefox in Ubuntu 22.04 anymore.

$ firefox
Sorry, home directories outside of /home are not currently supported.
See https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/11209 for details.

This is a long standing issue and should have been addressed before replacing the deb with the snap version imho.

---

$ snap info firefox
name: firefox
summary: Mozilla Firefox web browser
publisher: Mozilla✓
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/firefox
contact: https://support.mozilla.org/products/firefox
license: unset
description: |
  Firefox is a powerful, extensible web browser with support for modern web application
  technologies.
commands:
  - firefox
snap-id: 3wdHCAVyZEmYsCMFDE9qt92UV8rC8Wdk
tracking: latest/stable
refresh-date: today at 10:17 CEST
channels:
  latest/stable: 98.0.2-1 2022-03-24 (1154) 162MB -
  latest/candidate: 99.0-2 2022-03-31 (1188) 163MB -
  latest/beta: 100.0b1-1 2022-04-05 (1200) 163MB -
  latest/edge: 100.0a1 2022-04-05 (1201) 179MB -
  esr/stable: 91.7.1esr-2 2022-03-14 (1116) 161MB -
  esr/candidate: 91.8.0esr-1 2022-03-30 (1184) 161MB -
  esr/beta: ↑
  esr/edge: ↑
installed: 98.0.2-1 (1154) 162MB -

[Stefan Fleischmann (sfleischmann)]

I know that there are workarounds with bind-mounts and whatnot, but workarounds are not a feasible solution for a LTS release.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Darko Veberic (darko-veberic-kit)]

this is a major showstopper at our institute. we have 60+ ubuntu desktops with nfs-mounted homes and were postponing the switch from the last lts to this one for a while. but this cannot go on forever while availability of firefox is, obviously, crucial. i would classify this bug as "critical" and "urgent".