Firefox Bonkers.

[kdemeoz]

Hi. For past 2 days i've been losing a fight with FF on my Maui Lappy [FF continues to work correctly in my Maui Tower]. FF is not my preferred browser, but i still require it to work properly.

Every single one of the following actions, produces the same bad result; a dialog box pops up saying "Profile Missing. Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible" [for this troubleshooting i have been issuing commands in Konsole, so i can read the error msgs, but usually i simply launch FF via normal menu launcher. Also btw, my profile is "urmsktfc.default", & i have verified that this IS the one properly named in file "profiles.ini"]:

1. XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

2. XPS-L501X:~$ firefox -P
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

3. XPS-L501X:~$ sudo apt-get remove firefox
  (((for brevity i've not bothered pasting all the standard output here, but i did fully remove FF)))
  XPS-L501X:~$ sudo apt-get install firefox
  (((for brevity i've not bothered pasting all the standard output here, but i did fully install FF)))
  XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

4. XPS-L501X:~$ firefox -profilemanager
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

5. XPS-L501X:~$ firefox -safe-mode
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

6. I next moved my FF profile [by moving its parent folder ".mozilla"] from its default location of /home/kdemeoz ,  to a different location, & symlinked it back to /home/kdemeoz, then:
  XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

7. I returned ".mozilla" to default location, but then renamed it [so as to effectively deactivate it & force FF upon launch to create a new profile], then:
  XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.
  (((FF did create a new ".mozilla", but inside its "firefox" directory there was no new profile directory created, nor did any new profile wizard launch to help me)))

8. I copied all the directories & files from my backed-up copy of ".mozilla", into this newly-created fresh ".mozilla", then:
  XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

9. I renamed my profile's "profiles.ini" to "profiles_NFG.ini" [so as to effectively deactivate it & force FF upon launch to create a new profile], then:
  XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.
  (((FF did NOT create a new "profiles.ini")))

10. I edited "profiles.ini" to replace the relative path with the absolute path, then:
  XPS-L501X:~$ firefox
  Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.


To me all these symptoms smell of somehow some weird lack of permission of FF to access my own /home/kdemeoz directory, or to /home/kdemeoz/.mozilla, or to /home/kdemeoz/.mozilla/firefox, or to /home/kdemeoz/.mozilla/firefox/urmsktfc.default, but how on earth could that be possible? For the record, i confirmed anyway that the ownership & permissions of ALL those Lappy directories DO exactly match those in my Tower.

Current status -- FF on Lappy is bonkers & dead, & i am seriously considering renting an elephant to come & sit on my Lappy.  

Any ideas, anyone, pls?

[leszek]

Smells like a broken filesystem to me. Check your filesystem with a live system please.

[kdemeoz]

Thanks. Good news = Lappy's file system seems ok --> bad news = FF is still dead, & was that my last option?

Code:

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck.ext4 /dev/sda6
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
Maui: clean, 381421/2097152 files, 3776918/8388608 blocks
maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck.ext4 /dev/sda7
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
DATA: clean, 59335/13074432 files, 32246760/52290048 blocks
maui@maui:~$

Here's Lappy's partition structure [as viewed still in the Live boot], after my recent rebuild for dual-boot Mint + Maui [but subsequently converted to single-boot Maui by deleting the 32 GB /sda8 Mint partition, then expanding /sda7 DATA to use that space ... https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....9#pid41069]:
   

All my previously described FF tests/troubleshooting, occurred with the FF profile in its standard location within /home, but also some tests were with it moved to /DATA with symlink back. 

[kdemeoz]

Since my previous post [which concerns FF on my Lappy] i have [almost] entirely finished a rebuild of my Tower to do a clean-reinstall of Maui [to blow away suspected remnants of Mint 17.3 KDE4 causing several weird ongoing Maui misbehaviours, due(?) to my not having previously formatted but instead only reused my separate Mint encrypted /home partition]. I took this opportunity now to completely change Tower's SSD's partition table similar to that done recently in Lappy, so it now has a 35 GB / partition [no longer with a separate /opt & /home, which i had in Mint]; this new "internal" /home was again encrypted during installation. Also like Lappy now, Tower's SSD's remaining space is [mostly] used by a separate /DATA partition, which post-installation i encrypted manually via eCryptFS. 

As i said, Tower's new build is modelled after my recent Lappy rebuild. The big difference in subsequent experience concerns Firefox. As per all the earlier part of my thread, FF on Lappy simply will not work now. Conversely, FF in Tower works entirely correctly. So, this Lappy-FF problem just seems weirder upon weirder. As FF is the only thing which is not good on Lappy now, it seems entirely undesirable & unnecessary to have to take a nuclear option of doing yet another reinstallation of Maui on it. Practically-speaking, as earlier said, FF is not my default browser, so in purely pragmatic terms this problem barely affects me. However psychologically it does nonetheless distress me, simply coz "it's not right, & i like things to be right". Ha.

[kdemeoz]

Big hello to TbGbe. :-)