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Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

Firefox Installation and updates
Mandar Mitra replied
Mandar Mitra
Mandar Mitra

Hello,

I've tried running "firefox -P". I've also tried deleting ~/.mozilla. No matter what I do, I still keep getting this message.

OS: Linux 6.10.13-3-MANJARO Firefox versions: firefox 131.0.3-1 installed from the Arch repo via pacman; also firefox-132.0.2 installed from tarball downloaded from firefox.com and unpacked as /opt/firefox.

With firefox 131.0.3-1, I get the following error message:

[Parent 33389, IPC I/O Parent] WARNING: process 33445 exited on signal 9: file /usr/src/debug/firefox/firefox-131.0.3/ipc/chromium/src/base/process_util_posix.cc:335

With firefox-132.0.2, no messages are printed.

What is even more confounding: I have 2 user accounts on this computer. When I login as myself, I get this popup. When I login as the other user, firefox opens up fine.

I've already looked at the following, but that has not helped. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1327628 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1396772 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1454745

I'd be most grateful if someone could please suggest any other alternatives to try. Thanks!

Hello, I've tried running "firefox -P". I've also tried deleting ~/.mozilla. No matter what I do, I still keep getting this message. OS: Linux 6.10.13-3-MANJARO Firefox versions: firefox 131.0.3-1 installed from the Arch repo via pacman; also firefox-132.0.2 installed from tarball downloaded from firefox.com and unpacked as /opt/firefox. With firefox 131.0.3-1, I get the following error message: [Parent 33389, IPC I/O Parent] WARNING: process 33445 exited on signal 9: file /usr/src/debug/firefox/firefox-131.0.3/ipc/chromium/src/base/process_util_posix.cc:335 With firefox-132.0.2, no messages are printed. What is even more confounding: I have 2 user accounts on this computer. When I login as myself, I get this popup. When I login as the other user, firefox opens up fine. I've already looked at the following, but that has not helped. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1327628 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1396772 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1454745 I'd be most grateful if someone could please suggest any other alternatives to try. Thanks!

All Replies (3)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

Using firefox -P in a Terminal window should open the Profile Manager dialog so you can create a new profile or switch to one that still exists. Is Firefox ignoring the -P parameter, or not letting you create a profile?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles#w_start-the-profile-manager-when-firefox-is-closed

cor-el
cor-el
  • Top 25 Contributor
  • Moderator

Chosen Solution

Note that Firefox also places files in the profile in the secondary location in .cache/mozilla/firefox Note that if you install Firefox in /opt, you need to run Firefox as root (sudo) to be able to update.

Mandar Mitra
Mandar Mitra Question owner

@jscher2000, Thanks very much for taking the time out to suggest a solution. I was getting the error message in a popup window when running firefox either with, or without the -P option. It turns out a corrupted ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox directory was the problem. Solved now. Thanks again!

@cor-el, a corrupted ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox was the problem, I'd forgotten this secondary location. Many thanks!!