Ubuntu
firefox package

firefox will not open with my profile

Asked by Ian Brownlie

 I'm not sure if this is the right place but here goes. Out of the blue, firefox will not open with my profile, if I sudo firefox in a terminal it works fine. I don't get it, I'm unaware of doing anything that may have changed it. The profile manager still only has the 'default' profile which I haven't altered. Also, but I don't think this is related, lacie lightscribe can't find my dvd burner and won't let me select a drive. Can anybody help please ???
      Ian

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Ian Brownlie
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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Please try to clean mozilla firefox profile

Close all opened Firefox and try to delete your Firefox user setting open a terminal from applications → Accessories → Terminal and type:

mv .mozilla .mozilla_old

or if you get permission error

sudo mv .mozilla .mozilla_old

and restart Firefox.

If you have a lot of bookmarks please export them before move your setting directory, then import them again from saved file into Firefox.
Also take note of your installed Firefox extensions, to reinstall them.

if this works then delete the .mozilla_old directory, from terminal, type:

rm -fr .mozilla_old

or if you get permission error

sudo rm -fr .mozilla_old

hope this helps

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Ian Brownlie (ibrownlie) said : 		#2

 HELP!!!! Total Disaster, I,ve lost everything and firefox no longer works. I did as you suggested and followed your directions. The bookmarks were saved but firefox said it couldn't read the file that it had just created. Now firefox just starts as a blank, it will not let me edit preferences, or open at a designated home page. In short, as I said a total disaster. Where on earth do I go from here?

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#3

Simply try to reinstall Firefox: open a Terminal from the menu Applications → Accessories → Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --reinstall --purge install firefox-3.0

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Then retry

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Ian Brownlie (ibrownlie) said : 		#4

Thanks for the quick reply Marcoba, but, I'm afraid there are still problems. Firefox opens,but will still not let me edit preferences, and still opens with a blank page. and no bookmarks. A terminal will still open firefox but now the bookmarks have gone. Crazy huh?
        Ian

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Luky Winarto (luckyborneo) said : 		#5

Hi Ian,

Did you install the firefox with root id?
Would mind to give the output of this command from your terminal on your ubuntu box:

$ ls -al /usr/bin/ | grep firefox

My Ubuntu box looks like this one:
$ ls -al /usr/bin/ | grep firefox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2009-02-13 10:16 firefox -> firefox-3.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2009-02-13 10:16 firefox-3.0 -> ../lib/firefox-3.0.6/firefox.sh

Perhaps you having trouble with the permission of firefox. Try to re-install like Marcoba said. Use your user ID and then running this command from terminal:
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get --reinstall --purge install firefox-3.0

I hope that will help you...

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Ian Brownlie (ibrownlie) said : 		#6

  Thanks for the reply Luky, I did as you and Marcoba suggested, and WooHoo!! installing under my user name worked. Thanks guys, you have saved me a lot of grief.
        A very Grateful, Ian.