firefox browser lost all bookmarks and the back / forward buttons do not work

[prabhuft]

Firefox worked fine till yesterday, as of last night (US Arizona time), the forward and back buttons are greyed out, and i cannot go back. I tried to go into toolbars, customize and reset, and that only closes firefox completely, when i reopen, and it asks if i want to go to saved session, and say yes, it opens a blank page. I tried to reinstall firefox and it does not do anything. I use Ubuntu, with latest updates loaded this morning. firefox is version 3.0.5, firefox for unbuntu canonical 1.0 and ubunutu is Ubuntu 8.10
                - the Intrepid Ibex - released in October 2008

[Kaj Gornitzka (kajg)]

I have the same problem, except I'm using Ubuntu 8.04. A few days ago Firefox 3.0.5 lost all bookmarks, there's no back, forward reload or stop buttons (all greyed out, and using the alt + arrow keys is also disabled). Today Ubuntu updated Firefox to 3.0.6, but to no avail - nothing has changed. Other errors include disabled "Open links in new window" (opening them in a new tab seems to work, though), and a constant page loading turning wheel symbol in the tabs - but no animated symbol in the main window at all.

[Neal Konneker (ntkonn)]

Same problem. I am NOT happy. Do not appreciate being upgraded to a broken browser.
Greyed out nonworking forward and backwards buttons.
constant page loading turning wheel symbol in the tabs
Lost my bookmarks
homepage function did not work. At one point when I clicked the home icon I would be sent to the Mozilla homepage even after changing my homepage to something else. Seems to be working now.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009030422 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.7
On a celeron 2.93ghz
 uname -a
Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 19:24:39 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

[Neal Konneker (ntkonn)]

Homepage function works sporadically. When the homepage icon is clicked, the home html address is correctly loaded into the address bar, but the Mozilla/Firefox homepage loads instead. Or sometimes the address remains the same but the page correctly goes to the designated homepage.

[Neal Konneker (ntkonn)]

Problem fixed????

I have been trying to downgrade to a version of Firefox that worked and tried the following:

sudo apt-get purge firefox-3.0
rm -r ~/.mozilla/firefox
sudo apt-get install firefox-2

This failed to remove firefox-3.0 and I was told that firefox-2 was not available, however when I fired up the Firefox 3 that was not removed the forward and backward buttons were working as well as the home function. Perhaps doing the rm -r ~/.mozilla cleared out some old setup files that was causing the problem????

[prabhuft (prabhuft)]

I have since removed wubi and did a full install of ubuntu and now there are no issues.....

thanks
Prabhu

--- On Tue, 4/7/09, Neal Konneker <email address hidden> wrote:

> From: Neal Konneker <email address hidden>
> Subject: [Bug 322414] Re: firefox browser lost all bookmarks and the back / forward buttons do not work
> To: <email address hidden>
> Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 3:40 PM
> Problem fixed????
>
> I have been trying to downgrade to a version of Firefox
> that worked and
> tried the following:
>
> sudo apt-get purge firefox-3.0
> rm -r ~/.mozilla/firefox
> sudo apt-get install firefox-2
>
> This failed to remove firefox-3.0 and I was told that
> firefox-2 was not
> available, however when I fired up the Firefox 3 that was
> not removed
> the forward and backward buttons were working as well as
> the home
> function. Perhaps doing the rm -r ~/.mozilla cleared out
> some old setup
> files that was causing the problem????
>
> --
> firefox browser lost all bookmarks and the back / forward
> buttons do not work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/322414
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct
> subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: New
>
> Bug description:
> Firefox worked fine till yesterday, as of last night (US
> Arizona time), the forward and back buttons are greyed out,
> and i cannot go back. I tried to go into toolbars, customize
> and reset, and that only closes firefox completely, when i
> reopen, and it asks if i want to go to saved session, and
> say yes, it opens a blank page. I tried to reinstall firefox
> and it does not do anything. I use Ubuntu, with latest
> updates loaded this morning. firefox is version 3.0.5,
> firefox for unbuntu canonical 1.0 and ubunutu is Ubuntu
> 8.10
> - the Intrepid Ibex - released in October
> 2008

[Neal Konneker (ntkonn)]

I did not use wubi (had to look it up to find out what it is). I love my ubuntu installation and have had great success with VirtualBox for running XP from within ubuntu for those apps that require Windoze.

Neal

<email address hidden>

--- On Tue, 4/7/09, prabhuft <email address hidden> wrote:

> From: prabhuft <email address hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Bug 322414] Re: firefox browser lost all bookmarks and the back / forward buttons do not work
> To: <email address hidden>
> Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 7:20 PM
>
> I have since removed wubi and did a full install of ubuntu
> and now there are no issues.....
>
> thanks
> Prabhu
>
> --- On Tue, 4/7/09, Neal Konneker <email address hidden>
> wrote:
>
> > From: Neal Konneker <email address hidden>
> > Subject: [Bug 322414] Re: firefox browser lost all
> bookmarks and the back / forward buttons do not work
> > To: <email address hidden>
> > Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 3:40 PM
> > Problem fixed????
> >
> > I have been trying to downgrade to a version of
> Firefox
> > that worked and
> > tried the following:
> >
> > sudo apt-get purge firefox-3.0
> > rm -r ~/.mozilla/firefox
> > sudo apt-get install firefox-2
> >
> > This failed to remove firefox-3.0 and I was told that
> > firefox-2 was not
> > available, however when I fired up the Firefox 3 that
> was
> > not removed
> > the forward and backward buttons were working as well
> as
> > the home
> > function.  Perhaps doing the rm -r ~/.mozilla
> cleared out
> > some old setup
> > files that was causing the problem????
> >
> > --
> > firefox browser lost all bookmarks and the back /
> forward
> > buttons do not work
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/322414
> > You received this bug notification because you are a
> direct
> > subscriber
> > of the bug.
> >
> > Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu:
> New
> >
> > Bug description:
> > Firefox worked fine till yesterday, as of last night
> (US
> > Arizona time), the forward and back buttons are greyed
> out,
> > and i cannot go back. I tried to go into toolbars,
> customize
> > and reset, and that only closes firefox completely,
> when i
> > reopen, and it asks if i want to go to saved session,
> and
> > say yes, it opens a blank page. I tried to reinstall
> firefox
> > and it does not do anything. I use Ubuntu, with
> latest
> > updates loaded this morning. firefox is version
> 3.0.5,
> > firefox for unbuntu canonical 1.0 and ubunutu is
> Ubuntu
> > 8.10
> >
>    - the Intrepid Ibex - released in October
> > 2008
>
> --
> firefox browser lost all bookmarks and the back / forward
> buttons do not work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/322414
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct
> subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Robert Griffiths (r-griffiths)]

After updating to Firefox 3, Jaunty address bar remains blank after selecting address from Google. Bookmarks and history imports from Firefox 2, Hardy do not work. Buttons in tool bar greyed out, unable to return, refresh etc.

I triple boot Intrepid, Hardy and XP. Hardy and XP work OK.

Robert.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

> I triple boot Intrepid, Hardy and XP. Hardy and XP work OK.

its alway problematic to use the same profile in linux and windows; that calls for trouble. Maybe starting ffox in -safe-mode helps. Otherwise you need to run

 strace -f -eopen 2>&1 | tee /tmp/ffox.log.txt

and attach the ffox.log.txt file to this bug.

also consider to check whether it works after moving the $HOME .mozilla directory to a safe backup place.

[Robert Griffiths (r-griffiths)]

1. Environment
The three operating systems are on separate hard drives. They are chosen at startup by grub. XP never has access to the web. It provides the driver for a Sagem Photoprinter and a Canon 8400F scanner that lack Linux drivers. Intrepid was on one drive. It was updated to Jaunty in the hope of clearing a couple of difficult bugs that do not exist in Hardy. Unfortunately the problems were inherited by Jaunty. i.e Jaunty was not a new install. Hardy was updated to Firefox 3.0
2. Running Jaunty/Firefox in safe mode temporarily disabling all items in start window made no difference.
3. Running Jaunty/Firefox with strace created /tmp/ffox.log.txt which was run before and after safe mode test. The file was blank after all runs.
4. The files in /.mozilla were renamed. Firefox restarted in normal mode. Toolbar controls all worked OK.
5. Attempted to import bookmarks and history from Hardy. The import program cannot see Firefox on another drive (like all previous versions). Started Hardy/Firefox and exported Bookmarks and History to Jaunty Desktop. Both exported HTML files defaulted to the same name! (are they the same?). Started Jaunty/Firefox and imported HTML files. The bookmarks loaded OK, history still blank. History is not all that important.

Thanks for the ideas.

[drew212 (mstngdrew212)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 241609, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.