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Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

  • 6 replies
  • 16 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Liboicl

john789
john789
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I have a new install of fedora18 and I was trying to recover my firefox settings from a backup. The backup doesn't maintain file ownership so I ran 'chown -R john:john /home/john'. Now I can't start firefox, probably because of a file permission issue but if I remove the firefox dir and try to start firefox again it will create a new firefox dir and put a Crash Reports dir in it and then fail with an access denied error. So where is the premissions issue???

Thanks for you time John 

[john@localhost ~]$ firefox
Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.
[john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/
total 20
drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 Feb  1 12:08 extensions
drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 May 20 10:47 firefox
drwxrwx---. 2 john john 4096 Jul 27  2009 plugins
drwxrwx---. 7 john john 4096 Nov  4  2011 seamonkey
drwxrwx---. 3 john john 4096 Feb  1 12:08 sunbird
[john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/firefox/
total 20
drwxrwx---. 11 john john 4096 May 20 10:08 1cvwnvlm.default
drwxrwx---. 19 john john 4096 May 20 10:08 2efefjeo.default
drwxrwx---.  4 john john 4096 May 20 10:08 Crash Reports
drwxrwx---.  9 john john 4096 May 20 10:10 l35ysjq6.default
-rw-------.  1 john john   94 May 20 10:47 profiles.ini
[john@localhost ~]$ mv .mozilla/firefox firefoxbk
[john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/
total 16
drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 Feb  1 12:08 extensions
drwxrwx---. 2 john john 4096 Jul 27  2009 plugins
drwxrwx---. 7 john john 4096 Nov  4  2011 seamonkey
drwxrwx---. 3 john john 4096 Feb  1 12:08 sunbird
[john@localhost ~]$ firefox
Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.
[john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/
total 20
drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 Feb  1 12:08 extensions
drwx------. 3 john john 4096 May 20 10:52 firefox
drwxrwx---. 2 john john 4096 Jul 27  2009 plugins
drwxrwx---. 7 john john 4096 Nov  4  2011 seamonkey
drwxrwx---. 3 john john 4096 Feb  1 12:08 sunbird
[john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/firefox/
total 4
drwx------. 2 john john 4096 May 20 10:52 Crash Reports
[john@localhost ~]$  uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 3.8.11-200.fc18.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed May 1 19:44:27 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

(clearly I'm not doing this on the pc with the problem because firefox doesn't work there)

I have a new install of fedora18 and I was trying to recover my firefox settings from a backup. The backup doesn't maintain file ownership so I ran 'chown -R john:john /home/john'. Now I can't start firefox, probably because of a file permission issue but if I remove the firefox dir and try to start firefox again it will create a new firefox dir and put a Crash Reports dir in it and then fail with an access denied error. So where is the premissions issue??? Thanks for you time John <pre><nowiki>[john@localhost ~]$ firefox Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory. [john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/ total 20 drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 Feb 1 12:08 extensions drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 May 20 10:47 firefox drwxrwx---. 2 john john 4096 Jul 27 2009 plugins drwxrwx---. 7 john john 4096 Nov 4 2011 seamonkey drwxrwx---. 3 john john 4096 Feb 1 12:08 sunbird [john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/firefox/ total 20 drwxrwx---. 11 john john 4096 May 20 10:08 1cvwnvlm.default drwxrwx---. 19 john john 4096 May 20 10:08 2efefjeo.default drwxrwx---. 4 john john 4096 May 20 10:08 Crash Reports drwxrwx---. 9 john john 4096 May 20 10:10 l35ysjq6.default -rw-------. 1 john john 94 May 20 10:47 profiles.ini [john@localhost ~]$ mv .mozilla/firefox firefoxbk [john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/ total 16 drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 Feb 1 12:08 extensions drwxrwx---. 2 john john 4096 Jul 27 2009 plugins drwxrwx---. 7 john john 4096 Nov 4 2011 seamonkey drwxrwx---. 3 john john 4096 Feb 1 12:08 sunbird [john@localhost ~]$ firefox Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory. [john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/ total 20 drwxrwx---. 6 john john 4096 Feb 1 12:08 extensions drwx------. 3 john john 4096 May 20 10:52 firefox drwxrwx---. 2 john john 4096 Jul 27 2009 plugins drwxrwx---. 7 john john 4096 Nov 4 2011 seamonkey drwxrwx---. 3 john john 4096 Feb 1 12:08 sunbird [john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/firefox/ total 4 drwx------. 2 john john 4096 May 20 10:52 Crash Reports [john@localhost ~]$ uname -a Linux localhost.localdomain 3.8.11-200.fc18.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed May 1 19:44:27 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux</nowiki></pre> (clearly I'm not doing this on the pc with the problem because firefox doesn't work there)

Modified by cor-el

All Replies (6)

john789
john789 Question owner
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Oh bother, it took out the new line characters! Paste it into a text editor and replace [ with a new line then it'll be a little easyer to read.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Check if you have a profiles.ini file in the ~/.mozilla/firefox folder.

This usually happens when the profile that is marked in the profiles.ini file as Default=1 is missing.

If there is still a profiles.ini file, but the profile folder is gone then delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile. Otherwise you can create a new profile and use "Choose Folder" to recover an existing profile.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

john789
john789 Question owner
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Thanks, I'd already found that info.

There is no profiles.ini file just the Crash Reports dir and all that has in it is one file containing the numbers "1369043549".

Firefox is creating the firefox dir so it must have access to it (surely?), so there is a file somewhere outside of my home dir it need access to?

Thanks

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Profiles.ini shows like this: -rw-------. 1 john john 94 May 20 10:47 profiles.ini

So you need to make sure that this file has the correct default permissions (-rw-r--r--)

john789
john789 Question owner
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Thanks for the reply but there is no profiles.ini anymore.

[john@localhost ~]$ ls -l .mozilla/firefox/ total 4 drwx------. 2 john john 4096 May 20 10:52 Crash Reports [john@localhost ~]$

Liboicl
Liboicl
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I had a similar issue. The problem was the permissions on /root/.cache The current user has to be able to write to that folder in newer versions, as the cache is no longer keep in the same directory as the rest of the profile. So set it to chmod 777.