Hey On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Narendra Diwate <narendra.diw...@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 -- ubuntu-in mailing list ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in