The refresh feature isn't designed to work differently in nightly (or any other channel). Since you didn't have a refresh button in about:support you must have multiple profiles. I'm not sure exactly what happens when you can force a refresh (sounds like a bug that this can even happen).

Can you try to start up with the profile manager and see if your old profile is there?

If it isn't, your old profile should have been placed on your desktop. You can use these instructions to move things back to your current profile.

Let me know how that goes.

Thanks, Michael

You only see button to Reset Firefox on the "Help > Troubleshooting Information" page and in the Safe Mode startup window if you use the profile that is marked as Default=1 in the profiles.ini file (Profile Manager). If you do not have the "Reset" button then either use the Profile Manager to create a new profile or use the Profile Manager to start with the current default profile to get the Reset button in Firefox.

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

mars-f said

I followed the "Refresh Firefox" instructions on this site (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings), using a nightly build of Firefox on Linux, but the feature behaved differently than the Refesh Firefox page described.

I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126559 because the SUMO article should have a way to not show the button when Refresh isn't supported.

Michael Verdi said

The refresh feature isn't designed to work differently in nightly (or any other channel). Since you didn't have a refresh button in about:support you must have multiple profiles. I'm not sure exactly what happens when you can force a refresh (sounds like a bug that this can even happen). Can you try to start up with the profile manager and see if your old profile is there? If it isn't, your old profile should have been placed on your desktop. You can use these instructions to move things back to your current profile. Let me know how that goes. Thanks, Michael

According to the Profile Manager I am running the default profile for nightly. It's stored in ~/.mozilla/firefox-trunk/be6lpkvm.default-1422388902533.

The default profile for *stable* is ~/.mozilla/firefox/5tru1zbe.default.

The Refresh Firefox feature did create a folder: ~/Desktop/Old Firefox Data/5tru1zbe.default. However, it's contents don't match the contents of the stable profile. Maybe the nightly profile contents were placed in a directory with the stable profile name?

I tried restoring the places.sqlite file from ~Desktop into the new nightly profile (be6lpkvm.default), but firefox renamed the DB to "places.sqlite.corrupt".

I have a backup of my home folder, so I'll try restoring one of those instead.

See cor-el posting about the Default=1 label in the profiles.ini file. Firefox has only one "default" Profile, regardless of "default" being in the name of more than one Profile.

~/.mozilla/firefox-trunk/be6lpkvm.default-1422388902533. - the numbers at the end of that Profile name are there as a time stamp for when that Profile was refreshed.

1422388902533 = Tue Jan 27 2015 14:01:42 GMT-0600 (CST) [the 14:01:25 time will vary from GMT depending upon the Time Zone setting the user is using]

A bit more info: the nightly profile originally had the same directory name as the stable profile.

Before refreshing: stable: ~/.mozilla/firefox/5tru1zbe.default nightly: ~/.mozilla/firefox-trunk/5tru1zbe.default

After refreshing: stable: ~/.mozilla/firefox/5tru1zbe.default nightly: ~/.mozilla/firefox-trunk/be6lpkvm.default-1422388902533

Still no idea what happened to the files from the nightly profile, or why restoring the places.sqlite backup from '~Destop/Old Firefox Data' did not work.

I restored my nightly profile folder from my regular backups (not the Refresh Firefox backup), and nightly is working again.

"Before refreshing: stable: ~/.mozilla/firefox/5tru1zbe.default nightly: ~/.mozilla/firefox-trunk/5tru1zbe.default"

With respect, that wouldn't happen in a billion or so Firefox installations, much less on the same device. That part of the Profile name is randomly generated by an algorithm as a part of the installation process - 8 lower case alpha / numeric characters - 35 character set total [I don't think l is used, looks too much like the number 1 with some fonts].

My guess is that Profile was copied into another folder at some point in time; as the reason the prefix is identical.

"... or why restoring the places.sqlite backup from '~Destop/Old Firefox Data' did not work." Corrupt places.sqlite file in that Profile folder is the most likely reason - considering it was labeled as such.

Try restoring the latest bookmarks-backup file instead. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them#w_using-a-bookmark-backup-file