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I inadvertently deleted a lot of unbookmarked tabs so is there a way to get them back?

  • 14 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 21 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Immediately after I did I put a copy of places.sqlite from my profile in a safe place. places.sqlite seems to have thousands of urls in it. I am running 3.5.9 on FC11 (yeah I know I should upgrade but can't at the moment). Therefore I don't have "Help > Troubleshooting Information" available to me. Is there anything I can do (like upgrade to 3.6) to get the tabs back or are they gone forever?

Thanks for any help.

Immediately after I did I put a copy of places.sqlite from my profile in a safe place. places.sqlite seems to have thousands of urls in it. I am running 3.5.9 on FC11 (yeah I know I should upgrade but can't at the moment). Therefore I don't have "Help > Troubleshooting Information" available to me. Is there anything I can do (like upgrade to 3.6) to get the tabs back or are they gone forever? Thanks for any help.

All Replies (14)

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By the way I copied places.sqlite before I shut the browser session.

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If you closed tabs then some (max is 10) may be listed in the History > Recently Closed Tabs list.
Otherwise you need to check the browsing history to see if the missing websites show there.

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Hi thanks for the reply. About checking the browsing history that's why I was trying to find out if it is in places.sqlite or somewhere else?

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Yes, the browsing history is saved in places.sqlite.

You can also try to inspect places.sqlite with the SQLite Manager extension.

See also treads like these.

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Thanks very much for the links. They look just the ticket. However as I said in my first post I'm running FF 3.5.9 on FC11. The link https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/ says "Not available for Firefox 3.5.9". I downloaded FF 3.6.23 but even when I rename the equivalents of firefox, firefox-bin and run-mozilla.sh in 3.5.9 when I run 3.6.23 "Help > About Mozilla Firefox" tells me I'm running 3.5.9. I've looked at the .ini files but nothing looks likely. Can you tell me what I am doing wrong so that I can use 3.6.23 with sqlite-manager as in your previous reply? Is there some environment variable I'm overlooking?

Many thanks, Mike

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There is a version 0.5.17 on the Versions page that works with Firefox 3.5

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Hi cor-el,

Thanks for the link to the 3.5 version. However, there is still the other question of what makes 3.6.23 display 3.5.9 the help menu. I would still like to be able to use 3.6.x or later on FC11 as well for lots of reasons. At the very least I'd just like to understand. (I'm trying to learn.)

Thanks for any feedback on the other question.

Best, Mike

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Did you extract the files in the tar.bz2 archive to a folder?

You need to create a desktop shortcut to start the firefox script.


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Hi cor-el,

Yes I did. It didn't seem to work when just extracted into my home directory. After looking at the two wrapper scripts (firefox and run-mozilla.sh) it looked like it needed to be in /usr/local/lib/firefox-3.6.23 which I did and which works. The problem is that the Help menu is the one for 3.5.9 (including Help > About Firefox says version 3.5.9). Even if I rename the two wrapper scripts and the executable for 3.5.9 I still get the 3.5.9 Help menu. FWIW, my 3.5.9 was packaged in FC11 and the 3.5.9 firefox script is in /usr/bin.

I'm sure I'm just overlooking something obvious but here is some debugging output:

[mike@desktop firefox-3.6.23]$ pwd
/usr/local/lib/firefox-3.6.23
[mike@desktop firefox-3.6.23]$ ./firefox
+ moz_libdir=/usr/local/lib/firefox-3.6.23
+ found=0
+ progname=./firefox
++ dirname ./firefox
+ curdir=.
++ basename ./firefox
+ progbase=firefox
+ run_moz=./run-mozilla.sh
+ test -x ./run-mozilla.sh
+ dist_bin=.
+ found=1
+ '[' 1 = 0 ']'
+ script_args=
+ debugging=0
+ MOZILLA_BIN=firefox-bin
+ '[' linux-gnu = beos ']'
+ pass_arg_count=0
+ '[' 0 -gt 0 ']'
+ '[' 0 = 1 ']'
+ exec ./run-mozilla.sh ./firefox-bin
[mike@desktop firefox-3.6.23]$ 

Thanks for any help.

Cheers, Mike

Modified by cor-el

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Hi cor-el,

Sorry about the line feeds being lost. I can't figure out how to quote or attach anything. Hope you get the idea.

Regards, Mike

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Here again with line breaks. Sorry about the faff:

[mike@desktop firefox-3.6.23]$ pwd

/usr/local/lib/firefox-3.6.23

[mike@desktop firefox-3.6.23]$ ./firefox

+ moz_libdir=/usr/local/lib/firefox-3.6.23

+ found=0

+ progname=./firefox

++ dirname ./firefox

+ curdir=.

++ basename ./firefox

+ progbase=firefox

+ run_moz=./run-mozilla.sh

+ test -x ./run-mozilla.sh

+ dist_bin=.

+ found=1

+ '[' 1 = 0 ']'

+ script_args=

+ debugging=0

+ MOZILLA_BIN=firefox-bin

+ '[' linux-gnu = beos ']'

+ pass_arg_count=0

+ '[' 0 -gt 0 ']'

+ '[' 0 = 1 ']'

+ exec ./run-mozilla.sh ./firefox-bin

[mike@desktop firefox-3.6.23]$

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I install Firefox in a directory that I create in /usr/local and either start the program via a desktop shortcut with the /usr/local/firefox-80/firefox command or via a bash script for updating as root using no remote to avoid closing other Firefox version that are currently running and specifying the profile to use.


#!/bin/sh

cd /usr/local/firefox-80
./firefox -no-remote -P "default-BE"

In which location did you install Firefox?

Can you start Firefox in that folder via a script like I posted above?

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Hi cor-el,

Aye the -no-remote option was the issue. FYI, here is a brief summary of the behaviour I get when I do ./firefox in the 3.6 directory:

1. Instance of 3.5 running already without the -no-remote option produces a new instance of 3.5 with just the start screen open.

2. Instance of 3.5 running already with the -no-remote option produces the usual "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system." message.

3. No instance of 3.5 running with or without -no-remote option produces an instance of 3.6 with tabs previously saved opened, i.e., the correct behaviour.

Thanks very much for the help.

Cheers, Mike

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