Why does Firefox insist that my current profile is old?
I recently reinstalled Debian 13 on my workstation. This included installing Firefox-esr from the Debian repositories so the version before and after the reinstall is the same. Despite this, Firefox refused to start until I created a new profile - insisting that my profile was from an older version.
To add insult to injury, it offers a method to import data from Chromium (which I use rarely) but not from a previous Firefox profile.
Firefox Sync works so far as it goes, but not everyone wants to use it. Importing from a local profile should be easier to implement than remotely syncing - especially given that Firefox clients may not be the same on different devices.
And, of course, the initial point is that Firefox should accept a user profile when it was created by the same version. After all, when I upgrade Firefox on Debian, I'm not required to create a new profile. Why should I be forced to do it when I reinstall the same version?
All Replies (6)
Hi Gary
I recently updated to Debian 13 myself, so should be able to help.
Do you have a backup of your Firefox profile before you installed Trixie?
If so:
- Start Firefox ESR as installed in Debian
- Close Firefox ESR
- Find the profile folder
- Swap the entire contents with your backup, either the .mozilla folder or the contents of the profile folder itself.
When you start Firefox ESR, you should find your data all in place.
I hope that this helps.
Nope. Leaves me with the same issue.
Fortunately I made a copy of my new profile before trying the experiment, so I didn't lose that.
The Mozilla help suggests a few files that can be copied without Firefox complaining about the profile, but they aren't all that useful.
No. Just the entire profile. The .mozilla folder mainly contains a firefox folder with a lot of (mostly obsolete) profiles and a couple of .ini files.
If there is something else in the .mozilla folder, it shouldn't be there because the profile system supposedly allows you to run different versions of Firefox as well as the same version of Firefox in different configurations. Putting some kind of version-specific information outside of a profile would break that.
What is the name of the folder that you have backed up with your old profile?
It's just a copy of my entire home folder. All the files have the same names.
Unless Firefox tampers with the old profiles on a reinstall, the backup profile should be identical to the one in the current ~/.mozilla folder.
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