Steps to reproduce:
- Open Linux (up-to-date Ubuntu 16.04 x86-64 running as a VirtualBox guest, default installation plus guest additions) and start with a clean user profile. Do not launch the system's web browser (Firefox).
- Start the XAMPP (7.1.9) installation as per the FAQ: sudo <path to XAMPP installer>
- Let the installer launch the system's web browser (Firefox) by leaving the “Learn more about Bitnami for XAMPP” option checked (leaving the “Launch XAMPP” checkbox marked at the end of the installation will likely also work).
- Exit the web browser.
- Try to launch the web browser.
Expected results: The browser (Firefox) should open without a problem.
Actual results: The browser might not properly load. Given the listed examples, Firefox fails with a dialog reading “Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible” (on stdout/stderr: “Error. Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory”). This is due to the ~/.mozilla and ~/.cache/mozilla entries having been newly created as root-owned directories—with mode 700. Had Firefox been previously used the consequences might not be so obvious, but the conflict potential due to files that cannot be modified by the user is still there (e.g. new cache entries or perhaps modified profile files).
Observations: Comparing the user's home directory's contents ownership before and after the installer's execution I have also seen the apparition of ~/.dbus ~/.cache/ and an ~/.cache/event-sound-cache-* as root-owned entries which might also cause trouble.