Profiles Vanished
I have a linux debian 11 o/s with up-to-date Firefox I don’t know which version at the moment it is whatever debian repo pushes down. I have 5 profiles on this particular computer with no previous issues. I decided to create another profile to be used for some test work and when I created it I then launched it and opened a few tabs to make sure it worked then closed. I planned on copying the profile files from another profile into this one so I went to the profile folder - /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/profile.names
Once there I saw my other profiles but could not locate this one so I went back to an open browser where I had the about:profiles page open and decided to delete that new profile and start over I figured maybe I accidentally saved it to a different directory. I hit remove it and it gave me the box asking if I wanted to remove files I chose yes I then go back to - /home/user/.mozilla/firefox but folder firefox was gone with all of my profiles all that was left in .mozilla was - /home/user/.mozilla/extensions and - /home/user/.mozilla/systemextensionsdev. Both of these folders - “extensions” as well as “systemextensionsdev” are empty. I go to the local directory for each profile and the data is still there for each of the profiles - /home/user/.cache/mozilla/firefox/profile.name.
The recycle bin is empty. A system-wide search for the profiles comes up with just the ones in the .cache folder. Back at the about:profiles page any attempt to open the preexisting profile results in a prompt asking me to create a new profile. I still have the one profile open and the addons are not working correctly. I did a bookmark export on this profile and doing so generated the “firefox” folder that had disappeared plus a profile folder using the same name of this open profile - /home/user/.mozilla/firefox'profile.name - it created a profile folder for this open profile using the correct name.
Any ideas on how this happened? Can the local profiles still in .cache be used to somehow restore the full profiles?
Ausgewählte Lösung
I figured this one out. It does not ease the pain of the carnage that has been caused by the lost bookmarks in the four lost profiles but I see what happened. For as long as I can remember the way a new profile is created is using the profile wizard and at screen Enter profile name; there is a pre-populated line item below with a default name of as /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/ska9a4.Default User. When the new profile is created it will create a folder called “ska9a4.Default User” inside of folder “firefox”.
For some reason on my open browser when I created a new profile and called it Profile 6 it did not create a folder called Profile 6 instead it dumped the new profile directly inside of firefox. In my above circumstance when I went back to the profiles tab and deleted Profile 6 it deleted the firefox. This explains why I cold not find Profile 6 folder which made me think I set it up in the wrong location. The location was correct. The wizard failed to create a folder with the name of the profile to put the profile. I’ve checked three other computers they all create a profile folder. This computer has always created a profile folder. For some reason this particular browser has stopped creating a profile folder resulting in an untold amount of damage due to lost bookmarks since they are used heavily. If I were to create 10 profiles right now using the default path it would create 10 profiles using “firefox” as the profile folder meaning all profiles create would effectively be the same profile with 10 different names. I have not backed up my profiles in a few months so the most recent ones might not have any value compared to what was lost. Interesting both thunderbird and the firefox going off the rails this week.
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Ausgewählte Lösung
I figured this one out. It does not ease the pain of the carnage that has been caused by the lost bookmarks in the four lost profiles but I see what happened. For as long as I can remember the way a new profile is created is using the profile wizard and at screen Enter profile name; there is a pre-populated line item below with a default name of as /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/ska9a4.Default User. When the new profile is created it will create a folder called “ska9a4.Default User” inside of folder “firefox”.
For some reason on my open browser when I created a new profile and called it Profile 6 it did not create a folder called Profile 6 instead it dumped the new profile directly inside of firefox. In my above circumstance when I went back to the profiles tab and deleted Profile 6 it deleted the firefox. This explains why I cold not find Profile 6 folder which made me think I set it up in the wrong location. The location was correct. The wizard failed to create a folder with the name of the profile to put the profile. I’ve checked three other computers they all create a profile folder. This computer has always created a profile folder. For some reason this particular browser has stopped creating a profile folder resulting in an untold amount of damage due to lost bookmarks since they are used heavily. If I were to create 10 profiles right now using the default path it would create 10 profiles using “firefox” as the profile folder meaning all profiles create would effectively be the same profile with 10 different names. I have not backed up my profiles in a few months so the most recent ones might not have any value compared to what was lost. Interesting both thunderbird and the firefox going off the rails this week.