Firefox loses tables, bookmarks, history, passwords at every update (each 3 - 4 days). how to fix this?

Hi,

Sorry you experience that. Could you please share the following:

• Your OS (which Linux distribution and which version)
• How did you install Firefox (from your distribution's package manger or from Mozilla's website)
• Do you have multiple Firefox profiles?
• When the data disappears, do you see any error messages?

Answers: - Linux Ubuntu 24 Canonical-0002 - 1.0 - From Mozilla's website - no - it says that another security system might be in conflict, or many times nothing at all

The problem started two months ago, after an ordinary update requested by Mozilla. I am using Firefox for more than 10 years or more, absolutely flawless.

Kind regards, J

Haven't you upgraded you OS recently from an older system? (There were users that faced some profile folder issues after upgrading older distro to newer and potentially running into packager priorities/pin differences, or ending up with both package or tarball install alongside a newly system–provided store install that resulted in weird interactions.)

No, I upgraded to 24 years ago and small updates come directly from Ubuntu. It always worked perfectly. The problem might be in a corrupt Firefox update, but I don't detect one. Two months ago Firefox continued to press me to update it. I didn't do it but it came in automatically one morning when I fired-up the system. Is there a check-up of integrity for Firefox?

Faster than calculating the checksums it's easier to just pull the newest binary from firefox.com and replace it with it. Given you seem to be running updates to the binary on its own it either means you have it installed in the user space (so the executable can be written by anything?), or you had to set custom preferences for the app location for it to be able to update itself. I'd generally advice against this on a Linux system if you don't need to change or remotely/automatedly replace these — and use the Mozilla–provided DEB package repository instead… so that updates are provided on system level by APT if you already use it for other packages.

The other side of the problem though is what you describe is not an issue with the binary, but more access to the profile directory. To verify it that location sticks, you can 1.) create a new profile and use that one for a bit to see how that persists data over time; and also 2.) once you see your profile wiped, check the profile folder for its content and timestamps… does it look empty / missing / recreated fresh? Or it has a lot of data, with old timestamps, and there's just some mapping corruption going on?

Thanks. This seems very reasonable. I'll follow the counsel and let you know. I suspect a corruption by third party. The substitution of the existent package was my first option but I was waiting for the new laptop to come to life (it need to receive some more green letuce to grow to reality - my plans are for a 3'000 $ Pangolin with extras).