unable to see/navigate bookmarks and history on firefox 3

[nitto]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Hello all,
In my Ubuntu 8.04 AMD64 I'm running Firefox 3 (version 3.0.3+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1).

Yesterday I regularly turned off Firefox and my laptop (I did not install any new plug-in and I did not have any crash) and today, after turning on firefox I saw that all my bookmarks and the history were gone.

I made some attempt to recover them via bookmarks.html replacing or via the recovery procedure in the bookmarks menu.
I also try on safe-mode to reset the bookmarks and the toolbars but nothing solved my problem.

After some other work I discover that FF read correctly the bookmarks and the history because if I try to type something on my navigation toolbar that is in my history on bookmarked, FF can correctly let me use that address and is able to find them.
The only thing that is not working is my bookmarks toolbar, and both the bookmarks and history menus, all them all completely empty, as if no bookmarks or history exists. Also the "organize bookmark" says me that there are no bookmarks.

Do you have any idea??

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 4 11:20:57 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: ath_hal nvidia
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.3+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-21-generic x86_64

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Are you able to open the files in ~/.mozilla/firefox/<something>.default/bookmarkbackups/ and does ~/.mozilla/firefox/<something>.default/bookmarks.html still exist? Is it readable? Perhaps they were corrupted at some point...?

[nitto (nitto)]

Hi, thanks for your answer.

Bookmarks.html look good. I can open it on gedit and in FF and I can see all my bookmarks well formatted, like this:
<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>
<!-- This is an automatically generated file.
     It will be read and overwritten.
     DO NOT EDIT! -->
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>
<H1 LAST_MODIFIED="1203446668">Bookmarks</H1>

<DL><p>
    <DT><H3 ADD_DATE="1161462259" LAST_MODIFIED="1190460203" ID="rdf:#$.4WT33">Inglese</H3>
    <DL><p>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.freeuniverse.it/lingueonline.htm" ADD_DATE="1161462383" LAST_VISIT="1190460198" LAST_CHARSET="windows-1252" ID="rdf:#$05WT33">Corsi gratuiti di inglese, francese, spagnolo, tedesco, ...</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/index.cfm" ADD_DATE="1161462693" LAST_CHARSET="UTF-8" ID="rdf:#$15WT33">English Grammar and Writing : English language courses, English Grammar Online</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.englishpage.com/" ADD_DATE="1161462736" LAST_VISIT="1190460267" LAST_CHARSET="ISO-8859-1" ID="rdf:#$25WT33">Advanced English lessons</A>
.....
</DL><p>

I can also access to the files in the bookmarkbackup folder.

As I wrote, I want to underline that the navigation toolbar is able to recognize my bookmarks, so I think FF is reading them.
If I type something contained in my bookmarks (not present in the history) I get from the navigation toolbar the right link to the bookmarked website. So I can "access" somehow my bookmarks and also my history but I CANNOT see my bookmarks and history using the appropriate menu entries. Also my bookmark toolbar is empty and this is not so funny... :-(

Any other ideas??

[nitto (nitto)]

The problem was in the file places.sqlite of my profile.

I fixed the problem substituting the file with an other one from a new fresh profile.
I don't know where is the corruption inside the file, I attach it if somebody want to analyze it.

Anyway, this substitution fixed the problem.
places.sqlite is governing the bookmarks and history since FF3.

Thanks all

[nitto (nitto)]

Found a workaround

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Invalid, since a bug in your profile isn't a bug in Firefox.

[nitto (nitto)]

Ok, you are right, even if I don't know who corrupted the file, if a bug in FF or something else, in any case, I cannot reproduce the corruption, so it stays invalid.

[Jorge (jorgesp)]

this problem appears after a error machine - Do not recognize the ethernet port - and all the tabs appears with error working lack connection.
Now, each time I begin the program as it is the fisrt time.

regards

Jorge.