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Firefox: lost favorites, extensions, ...


papaschtroumpf
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I have lost my favorites, extensions, bookamrks, etc... in firefox

I am pretty sure it's due to some kind of "profile" issue and the fact that I used firefox in a VNC session, but I'm not sure what those "profiles" are about, I just know that I have gotten some "profile in use" type of error in firefox before, but only under linux.

I also know that in the past, if I used Firefox under VNC, that copy doesn't have my favorites for example. I think waht was different today is that I didn't have firefox open on display :0 (I almost always have firefox open), so I wonder if VNC grabbed my "main" profile and either screwed it up or doidn't "give it back"

 

I knwo this is a bit vague, but it's becasue I'm confused about what's going on.

Any pointers? (I think I'm running firefox 1.0 but it's hard to say because the "About" box is a little off.)

Edited by papaschtroumpf
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Thanks that help, in my .mozilla/firefox I have 2 profile foldes, one called default.8nc and one called tt7dsic4.VNCUser so my suspiscion that using firefox under VNC was the cause of the problem is confirmed.

 

There is also a profiles.ini which contains:

[General]

StartWithLastProfile=1

 

[Profile0]

Name=default

IsRelative=1

Path=default.8nc

 

[Profile1]

Name=VNCUser

IsRelative=1

Path=tt7dsic4.VNCUser

Default=1

 

I need to find some firefox doc so I undertand how to manage profiles and select the one I want to use. for now I will try moving the Default=1 to the first profile ans see ifthat fixes it.

 

I'm not sure why firefox has to create a new profile when I use VNC though, why can't it just use the existing one?

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Firefox only allows one running process at a time. So if firefox was already running on the computer that you vnc'ed into, it cannot use that profile to start a new session, the profile is locked as it is in use.

 

There are ways around this though.

 

This is the script I use to start firefox, all my shortcuts to firefox point to this script. What the script does, is, if firefox is running, then instead of attempting to start a new firefox session, it requests it to open a new window for the existing session using that profile. If firefox isnt running it will start a new session.

 

#! /bin/bash
firefox=/opt/mozilla-firefox/firefox
if pgrep firefox-bin
then
 echo Firefox is running. 
 ${firefox} -remote "openURL(${*},new-window)"
else 
 echo Firefox isnt running.
 ${firefox} ${*}
fi

 

So it's pretty simple,

1. put this script in a file, for example, /usr/bin/firefox.sh

2. edit the firefox= line to point to where firefox is located, or if you arent sure, run "whereis firefox" or "whereis mozilla-firefox"

3. chmod +x /usr/bin/firefox.sh or wherever you put the script.

4. point all your firefox shortcuts to this instead, and you'll never get that horrible Profiles dialog again.

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Another thing you should know, I do this myself :P . If you want to save your favorites to a file, just in case you're paranoid like I am, you can always go to Bookmarks->Manage Bookmarks, and click File->Export there. That way (if you use bookmarks as insanely as I do) you at least won't lose your bookmarks if this problem ever happens again. Good luck! :headbang:

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  • 2 weeks later...
Firefox only allows one running process at a time. So if firefox was already running on the computer that you vnc'ed into, it cannot use that profile to start a new session, the profile is locked as it is in use.

 

There are ways around this though.

 

This is the script I use to start firefox, all my shortcuts to firefox point to this script. What the script does, is, if firefox is running, then instead of attempting to start a new firefox session, it requests it to open a new window for the existing session using that profile. If firefox isnt running it will start a new session.

 

#! /bin/bash
firefox=/opt/mozilla-firefox/firefox
if pgrep firefox-bin
then
 echo Firefox is running. 
 ${firefox} -remote "openURL(${*},new-window)"
else 
 echo Firefox isnt running.
 ${firefox} ${*}
fi

 

So it's pretty simple,

1. put this script in a file, for example, /usr/bin/firefox.sh

2. edit the firefox= line to point to where firefox is located, or if you arent sure, run "whereis firefox" or "whereis mozilla-firefox"

3. chmod +x /usr/bin/firefox.sh or wherever you put the script.

4. point all your firefox shortcuts to this instead, and you'll never get that horrible Profiles dialog again.

 

 

When I connect to a VNC session on display :1 and run the script it identifies the fact that firefox is already running (on display :0) but I get a "Error: No running window found" error message. Seems that you can't use -remote accross displays?

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