Firefox bookmarks gone! (more info)

[Daniel Robitaille]

> Actually, what more likely happened is it loaded YOUR bookmark file fine
> when you ran it as root, then saved it again AS ROOT to your profile
> directory.  The bookmarks file is then owned by root, and readable only
> by root.  You then fire up Firefox as yourself, and now it can't read
> the bookmarks file because it's owned by root.  But the directory is
> still owned by you, which means you can delete it.  So it proceeds to
> write out the default bookmark file over top of it.

I have always had problem with this concept in Unix/Linux.  I always
thought it was more intiutive from a user point of view if I wasn't
able to  erase a file since I don't own it.  The action or being able
to erase or not a file shouldn't be dependent on its directory's
permissions but solely on the file permission itself.

As for this specific problem,  I think it should be a firefox bug: 
the application shouldn't think it is in it own right to clobber a
file simply because it is not readable: it should test if the file is
there or not, not simply test for its accessibility.