[ubuntu-in] Firefox issue

[Sanjay Bhangar]

Hey

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Narendra Diwate
<narendra.diwate at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been having issues with the Firefox browser for the past few months.
>
> Firefox version: 3.6.11 Ubuntu x86_64
> OS: Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64
> Add ons: Flash block, Ad Block+, image block
>
> Issue faced: Occasionally on booting up and starting Firefox, the top menu
> bar, the location bar drop down, backward and forward, refresh and home do
> not work. Clicking them has no effect. Though I can enter a url in the
> location bar, the drop down that gives recently browsed sites is
> unavailable. Using the keyboard shortcuts for these doesn't work too. So
> essentially all my browsing history, bookmarks, saved passwords are not
> accessible.
>
> Restarting the browser/system doesn't help. Deleting the whole profile
> folder restores the functionality, though it takes me back to a blank slate
> as far as my personalisation and  browsing history is concerned and
> everything needs to be rebuilt. Restoring the profile folder causes the
> issue to reappear.
>
> So it appears to have something to do with the profile stored.
>
> Would like to look if any one has has similar issues but can't get a hang of
> how to best describe this or how others would have described it.
>

I used to have this issue / what sounds like similar issues about a
year ago - I'm fairly certain, though, that this used to occur because
I would use the same profile between multiple versions of Firefox. If
I made sure to use different profiles for different versions I was
using / testing, things seemed mostly okay. That said, it did seem
that sometimes a profile would randomly die and I would have to create
a fresh profile to have the browser work. If you do a lot of testing
in the browser - installing experimental add-ons, trying different
versions of ff, etc., I would highly recommend to keep a separate
experimental profile and a separate normal profile for everyday use.
You can even run two instances of firefox with two different profiles
at the same time using the --no-remote option on startup. In my
experience, with a lot of experimentation, profiles eventually kill
themselves :(.

> Any pointers, suggestions etc to resolve this. I am sure you understand how
> bad it feels when all the history, bookmarks, passwords etc are in a way
> lost when this happens. Also how and where to post this or search if already
> similar bug is posted with Ubuntu and Firefox.
>
> P.S: Is there a way to separate the personal info like history, passwords
> and bookmarks from the profile somehow?
>

Getting out the bookmarks should be easy - not so sure about history
and passwords. For bookmarks, go to the profile folder (
~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile_folder>/ ), there is one bookmarks.html
and also a bookmarkbackups folder which should contain some .json
files. There should be some easy way to import those.

All the best,
Sanjay