I take it that, when you reinstalled the OS, you overwrote your $HOME folder which is probably where your profile folder was stored. An advanced text editor can open an html file (and create a new one). Have you tried opening the html file in Firefox? I forget the details but there were issues with the add-on Default Bookmark Folder and FF86 which meant you needed to disable it before attempting to restore a file. Hopefully, it is only one copy of the html file which has been corrupted and the original on your external HD is still OK.

I take it that, when you reinstalled the OS, you overwrote your $HOME folder which is probably where your profile folder was stored. An advanced text editor can open an html file (and create a new one). Have you tried opening the html file in Firefox? I forget the details but there were issues with the add-on Default Bookmark Folder and FF86 which meant you needed to disable it before attempting to restore a file. Hopefully, it is only one copy of the html file which has been corrupted and the original on your external HD is still OK.

I actually wiped the entire HD,so recovering something would be next to impossible. Specifying i store the backup of bookmarks on external HD days before my OS went nuts. I didn't know about the add-on boorkmarks had issues,so i didn't try the solution you mentioned. Would you be kind to tell me how o disable it? Specifying that i exported the bookmarks.html directly to the external HD connected to the laptop with USB Docking. Really appreciated. Not sure if My Firefox is v.86 or the newer,since i do not really look for all the updates software center tells me,unless i installed things i know could be problematic.

To disable the add-on, open add-ons (ctl+shft+a) and click on the blue icon shown in the attached screenshot which will then change to grey.

So it came to my mind that the .html file could've been damaged. Now i tried many ways to open the file either in command line or text editor i even tried using libreoffice,in the case of text editor,command line such gedit,pico,nano it loaded the file but it was heavily encrypted,in the case of libreoffice shortly after i tried to open the file popped up a message telling me that the file was corrupted and libreoffice couldn't read it and stopped.

How did you create this file, bookmarks.html? It shouldn't be encrypted if you created it using the standard Export procedure (Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks). It should just be a normal web page you can view by opening it in a tab.

Did you use the Backup function which creates a JSON file? That file is not encrypted but is highly compact and usually starts off like this:

{"guid":"root________","title":"","index":0,

To restore a JSON backup, use the Restore option. I don't know whether you need to change the file extension to .json first. See: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer.

If you didn't create the backup manually but instead copied one of the compressed .jsonlz4 backup files from the bookmarkbackups folder, those are not human-readable, but can be restored in the same way as an uncompressed JSON backup.

zmikymiky1976 said

So it came to my mind that the .html file could've been damaged. Now i tried many ways to open the file either in command line or text editor i even tried using libreoffice,in the case of text editor,command line such gedit,pico,nano it loaded the file but it was heavily encrypted,in the case of libreoffice shortly after i tried to open the file popped up a message telling me that the file was corrupted and libreoffice couldn't read it and stopped.

How did you create this file, bookmarks.html? It shouldn't be encrypted if you created it using the standard Export procedure (Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks). It should just be a normal web page you can view by opening it in a tab.

Did you use the Backup function which creates a JSON file? That file is not encrypted but is highly compact and usually starts off like this:

{"guid":"root________","title":"","index":0,

To restore a JSON backup, use the Restore option. I don't know whether you need to change the file extension to .json first. See: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer.

If you didn't create the backup manually but instead copied one of the compressed .jsonlz4 backup files from the bookmarkbackups folder, those are not human-readable, but can be restored in the same way as an uncompressed JSON backup.

Posted a screen shot of what i see either when i open the .html file with firefox on a tab and command line along with few text editors that can actually load the file,as i said LibreOffice says that the file is broke.

Answering your queries, i created the bookmarks.html file with export to html in firefox as i always did in the past 5 years since i started using firefox,before i got the file broken maybe when it was created in external HD, i always saved the .html file on my Desktop and than moved it on external HD it always worked any time i was to import the bookmarks on a fresh installation of Firefox.

Is there a way to repair/fix some how the broken bookmarks.html file? Or at the very least try to extract from the file what i see as encrypted? Again i am not sure if the file was encrypted or not wheni open it i see is as encrypted coz i cannot see the links written in the file.

If it wasn't going to take much space here i would've posted the entire file by copy and paste from the command line,since its 3.3Mb i assume that it would take a few pages in the forum.

To disable the add-on, open add-ons (ctl+shft+a) and click on the blue icon shown in the attached screenshot which will then change to grey.

Well i checked anywhere in my add-ons and i cannot see anything regarding my bookmarks,since i haven't installed any. So i presume that is an internal thing of firefox,which i have no idea how to handle.

I posted what i see when i open the bookmarks.html on firefox and command line along with few text editors. What i perceive as encrypted it might just be because the file is broken corrupted whatever you wanna call it.

jscher2000 said

How did you create this file, bookmarks.html? It shouldn't be encrypted if you created it using the standard Export procedure (Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks). It should just be a normal web page you can view by opening it in a tab.

Posted a screen shot of what i see either when i open the .html file with firefox on a tab and command line along with few text editors that can actually load the file,as i said LibreOffice says that the file is broke.

Answering your queries, i created the bookmarks.html file with export to html in firefox as i always did in the past 5 years since i started using firefox,before i got the file broken maybe when it was created in external HD, i always saved the .html file on my Desktop and than moved it on external HD it always worked any time i was to import the bookmarks on a fresh installation of Firefox.

Is there a way to repair/fix some how the broken bookmarks.html file? Or at the very least try to extract from the file what i see as encrypted?

I don't know what went wrong with that file, but it doesn't look familiar at all. In your old configuration, did you use any encryption features or programs that could have encrypted the file while saving?

zmikymiky1976 said

jscher2000 said

How did you create this file, bookmarks.html? It shouldn't be encrypted if you created it using the standard Export procedure (Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks). It should just be a normal web page you can view by opening it in a tab.

Posted a screen shot of what i see either when i open the .html file with firefox on a tab and command line along with few text editors that can actually load the file,as i said LibreOffice says that the file is broke.

Answering your queries, i created the bookmarks.html file with export to html in firefox as i always did in the past 5 years since i started using firefox,before i got the file broken maybe when it was created in external HD, i always saved the .html file on my Desktop and than moved it on external HD it always worked any time i was to import the bookmarks on a fresh installation of Firefox.

Is there a way to repair/fix some how the broken bookmarks.html file? Or at the very least try to extract from the file what i see as encrypted?

I don't know what went wrong with that file, but it doesn't look familiar at all. In your old configuration, did you use any encryption features or programs that could have encrypted the file while saving?

Nope as far as i can remember,only recently i started to use the encryption for the /sda drive . How could i decrypt that file? Can it be possible that the file was damaged while firefox was saving the .html on external hd?

P.S. i am kinda beginner on linux and i am still learning.

jscher2000 said

In your old configuration, did you use any encryption features or programs that could have encrypted the file while saving?

Nope as far as i can remember,only recently i started to use the encryption for the /sda drive . How could i decrypt that file? </blockquote>

I don't know how your encryption works. Is it part of your distribution? There must be a place to get help with it. Are any other files on the same disk affected?

Can it be possible that the file was damaged while firefox was saving the .html on external hd?

I don't know whether Firefox ever would save garbage data into bookmarks.html. Considering that you can't find any readable text in the file, it seems more likely that the operating system's understanding of the starting and ending points of the file is incorrect or that it was encrypted outside of Firefox.

zmikymiky1976 said

jscher2000 said

In your old configuration, did you use any encryption features or programs that could have encrypted the file while saving?

Nope as far as i can remember,only recently i started to use the encryption for the /sda drive . How could i decrypt that file?

I don't know how your encryption works. Is it part of your distribution? There must be a place to get help with it. Are any other files on the same disk affected?

Can it be possible that the file was damaged while firefox was saving the .html on external hd?

I don't know whether Firefox ever would save garbage data into bookmarks.html. Considering that you can't find any readable text in the file, it seems more likely that the operating system's understanding of the starting and ending points of the file is incorrect or that it was encrypted outside of Firefox. </blockquote>

Partially fixed the problem,came into my mind just an hour ago that i had a winzoz HD with OS installed in it,its not the most up to date bookmarks i had but its quiet close. Already imported the .josnlz4 from winzoz to linux. Thank you for all the help each provided,rally appreciated.

Since after that i will be more cautious and have a .txt file stored somewhere how would i convert the .jsonlz4 to .txt and having it decrypted since i see very few links not encrypted?

The .jsonlz4 file is compressed, and Firefox does not encrypt it. I have a page that converts it to a bookmarks.html file:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/bookbackreader.html

But of course you can create exports yourself periodically:

Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks

The .jsonlz4 file is compressed, and Firefox does not encrypt it. I have a page that converts it to a bookmarks.html file: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/bookbackreader.html But of course you can create exports yourself periodically: Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks

Apologize for the late answer,your link was helpful and also i found a way to convert .html not broken to .txt,file without any imperfection or error,since i'fe kinda become paranoid about safe keepin' of my bookmarks i have also decided to keep a .txt copy if it into an archive,just in case the .html got damaged agan. Well since my problem yes asnt been fully resolved but at the very least i recovered good chunk of what i've lost, i'd say that thread can be close. Thank you all that provided suggestion tips so on for your time spent giving me those tips.