Hello,

The Refresh feature (called "Reset" in older Firefox versions) can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your bookmarks, history, passwords, cookies, and other essential information.

Note: When you use this feature, you will lose any extensions, toolbar customizations, and some preferences. See the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article for more information.

To Refresh Firefox:

1. Open the Troubleshooting Information page using one of these methods:
   • Click the menu button , click help and select Troubleshooting Information. A new tab containing your troubleshooting information should open.
   • If you're unable to access the Help menu, type about:support in your address bar to bring up the Troubleshooting Information page.
2. At the top right corner of the page, you should see a button that says "Refresh Firefox" ("Reset Firefox" in older Firefox versions). Click on it.
3. Firefox will close. After the refresh process is completed, Firefox will show a window with the information that is imported.
4. Click Finish and Firefox will reopen.

Did this fix the problem? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

Hi Mkil,

Thanks for the suggestion but unfortunately, that didn't help. All my extensions were indeed gone but any that I try to add exhibits the same problem.

I tried to add Tree Style Tab first. It prompted:

  It requires your permission to:
  o Display notifications to you
  o Access recently closed tabs
  o Access browser tabs

I clicked "Add" and it showed up on my extensions list but with only the "Download x" button on the right. When I clicked back on the "Tree Style Tab" page on addons.mozilla.org, the permission request dialog was there again.

I also tried with the "Disconnect" extension and saw exactly the same behavior so it sounds like it's not an issue with any particular extension.

Both "Disconnect" & "Tree Style Tab" were working in 57 before I did the Refresh.

I did back up the whole mozilla directory before doing any of this so I'd be able to continue to work with the extensions that do work.

This is really strange, have you tried this in a completely fresh profile with no previous data?

Hi Mkil,

Thanks again. Well, this is becoming quite the conundrum.

First, I quit Firefox and ran it with --ProfileManager, created a new profile but experienced the same issue.

Then, since I got to Firefox 57 though many months or years of updates, I completely removed the firefox install directory (/opt/firefox), downloaded a fresh full version for 64-bit Linux from mozilla.org and installed it. I also went through my shell & environment variables & unset anything that showed up with "egrep -i 'moz|fire'". Using my new test profile, the issue remained.

Then, I completely removed $HOME/.mozilla but that didn't help either.

Lastly, I created a completely new user with an empty home directory and ran Firefox remotely (so I could log in fresh with none of my own shell environment getting in the way) and again, the problem still remained.

I attached a screen shot of the Add-ons Manager from this last test. If I click on the "Disconnect" tab, it'll prompt for permissions again.

So I presume the next thing to look at is Mageia itself but I'm not sure what to look there. I think I have the firefox rpm installed so I could try uninstalling that.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

You might need to change distros to something Ubuntu based -- be sure to backup everything before you do so.

Hi Mkil,

First I uninstalled all firefox packages on Mageia but had the same problem.

But, so here's a kicker:

Then I figured I'd try this system I have running Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS. I installed a fresh copy of Firefox 57, moved $HOME/.mozilla out of the way and experienced the same issue!

I was recently playing with Mint 18.2 in VirtualBox so I booted up that VM, installed Firefox 57 fresh in /opt and again, same issue.

I'm running out of things to rule out. Is there some debug mode in which I can run Firefox to see if I'm getting any errors? I'm running it from the command line and no messages are printing out.

Make sure the add-ons you are trying to install are actually supported by Quantum.

All but the first tests I've done were with the "Disconnect" extension which I believe is supported. I'll be happy to try another but I've tried 4 or 5 so far that are supposedly supported, all with the same result.

Try Ublock Origin.

Same thing. I attached two screenshots. The one that contains "after-install" is to show that the permission dialog pops up again after it's "installed" when switching back to that tab.

Ugh, this is really weird! Have you tried grabbing an .xpi and installing that way?

I'll be happy to try that but I wasn't sure that was still allowed in 57 (nor am I sure how to do it [yet]).

In my upgraded profile (the one I started with on Mageia), I search for all .xpi files in $HOME/mozilla and noticed that they're stored under *.default/extensions. However, in the pristine .mozilla directory, I found one .xpi file in *.default/features:

$ ll features/\{82b5a6e8-5772-44ce-bd39-b2ac0c780f92\}/ total 8.0K -rw------- 1 me me 5.4K Dec 1 11:41 disable-media-wmf-nv12\@mozilla.org.xpi

I'm not sure if this was correct but I copied the uBlock xpi file from the extensions directory under my Mageia profile and put it in the above features/* directory, started ff 57 but no dice. Then I created an extensions directory under *.default, stuck the xpi file there and it showed up in the plugins manager correctly and works as expected.

I'm not too familiar with how 57 is supposed to handle extensions differently from prior versions at the file level, though so I'm not sure where to go from here. I can, of course, hunt down all the xpi files for the plugins I want and put them in the extensions directory but something tells me that's more of a workaround than a permanent fix.

What's your thoughts?

You can do that for now until I find a perm solution.

I'll give it a whirl.

What's the best way to acquire the xpi files with the correct filenames? They seem to be simple zip files but it seems the filename is important. I went to the home page for one or two extensions (git) but they provide the files that go into the xpi files but I couldn't find what filename to use.

I was able to catch the xpi file for "Custom Titlebar Text" in my /tmp directory between downloading and approving the permissions. I first moved tmp-azj.xpi into extensions, restarted but FF didn't see it. I tried "Custom titlebar Text.xpi" but it didn't like that either. I installed the same extension on a windows box (ick) and was able to figure out the filename. Once I renamed it to that filename and restarted, it worked fine.

Is there an easier way to grab or create the xpi files with the correct filename?

Thanks again for all your help.

Nevermind. I think I found it. I found an id code in the manifest.json that matches the filename. In an older extension, I found an id that matches in install.rdf. I'll play around with that for now.

Let me know if you need any further information, tests or if you want me to file a bug report.