refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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Brummelchen
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refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by Brummelchen »

some help includes the profile refresh. but unfortunately there exist a bug in firefox 55 which leads to lost bookmarks and history when doing this way.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/re ... d-settings

bugreport:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1388611

fixed in v56
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DanRaisch
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by DanRaisch »

"Refresh" has always been a bad idea. Not sure why it was introduced when creating a new profile provided the same results but with less confusion.
Brummelchen
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by Brummelchen »

refresh is a welcome firefox option - not all users are familiar with opening %appdata%\mozilla\profiles - in some cases they wont see all files.

but - i would prefer copied files to a new profile (by firefox) instead this desktop folder, because same people run into same trouble while copying files back. so they just switch profiles and all is back. <-- i had this in mind last year while writing my own firefox backup but i never implemented it.

best ever is a (regular) backup of that folder.
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James
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by James »

Brummelchen wrote:refresh is a welcome firefox option - not all users are familiar with opening %appdata%\mozilla\profiles - in some cases they wont see all files.

but - i would prefer copied files to a new profile (by firefox) instead this desktop folder, because same people run into same trouble while copying files back. so they just switch profiles and all is back. <-- i had this in mind last year while writing my own firefox backup but i never implemented it.

best ever is a (regular) backup of that folder.
The Refresh has not been a welcome option nor has it been great.

The problem is it is not clear of what it does as many users are lead to believe that Refresh will only just do some dusting and tidying things up, not essentially creating a new blank Profile and dumping mostly the useful stuff in a folder on desktop. If it was a case of it creating a new Profile and it copying over essential stuff like passwords and bookmarks to new Profile and it helping you deal with remaining settings from old Profile then it would be better.
Brummelchen
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by Brummelchen »

if you want to discuss i am out. for me mozilla described very well what a refresh is performing. at least it worked until now flawlessly and users were happy. if some dont understand he can ask again. for me i am only telling you that it is currently broken, its up on you give advise as you like to give and there always are several roads to rome.
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Mark12547
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by Mark12547 »

It looks like Bug 1388611 is still broken in 55 (at least that is how I read it), but fixed in the other releases (ESR 52, Beta/Dev 56, Nightly 57). So when 56 rolls into Release this shouldn't be an issue any more.
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BobbyPhoenix
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by BobbyPhoenix »

I've used the Refresh option four times in this past year, and all four times they fixed my issues. Start clean, and sign back in to Sync, and carry on. I don't know why people have issues. I've also done the "uninstall Firefox, and delete all files manually" which does the same thing from my experience, but the Refresh is a click one button, and done. No looking for files to delete.
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James
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by James »

BobbyPhoenix wrote:I've used the Refresh option four times in this past year, and all four times they fixed my issues. Start clean, and sign back in to Sync, and carry on. I don't know why people have issues. I've also done the "uninstall Firefox, and delete all files manually" which does the same thing from my experience, but the Refresh is a click one button, and done. No looking for files to delete.
You may not care about essential things like Bookmarks and Passwords and such.
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BobbyPhoenix
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by BobbyPhoenix »

James wrote:
BobbyPhoenix wrote:I've used the Refresh option four times in this past year, and all four times they fixed my issues. Start clean, and sign back in to Sync, and carry on. I don't know why people have issues. I've also done the "uninstall Firefox, and delete all files manually" which does the same thing from my experience, but the Refresh is a click one button, and done. No looking for files to delete.
You may not care about essential things like Bookmarks and Passwords and such.
I do very much. That's why I mentioned signing back into Sync. I sync everything on all my machines. I can do a fresh install on a new machine, and withing minutes it's identical to all my other ones. Have an issues that a simple change in settings can't fix? Do a refresh, sign back into Sync, and carry on in minutes.
Do, or do not. There is no try.
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malliz
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by malliz »

Wonderful for someone with inside knowledge but we see an awful lot of people who dont use sync and don't fully understand the consequences of "Refresh" due to Mozilla historically woeful documentation and poor explanations. "Just push the button Max" has caused a lot of grief for a lot of people
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BobbyPhoenix
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by BobbyPhoenix »

malliz wrote:Wonderful for someone with inside knowledge but we see an awful lot of people who dont use sync and don't fully understand the consequences due to Mozilla historically woeful documentation and poor explanations. "Just push the button Max" has caused a lot of grief for a lot of people
Very true. I get all the negative points made here. I think I have good results because I'm a super cautious person before I do anything. If I do this what will happen? What if I want this? What will happen with all my stuff? I'm like the riddler.
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Mark12547
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by Mark12547 »

BobbyPhoenix wrote:I've used the Refresh option four times in this past year, and all four times they fixed my issues. Start clean, and sign back in to Sync, and carry on. I don't know why people have issues. I've also done the "uninstall Firefox, and delete all files manually" which does the same thing from my experience, but the Refresh is a click one button, and done. No looking for files to delete.
In reading Bug 1388611 it looks like the problem is was caused by the .sqlite files having overflow (.sqlite-wal) that the reset process wasn't preserving. One probably didn't run into this if one had started Firefox, shut down Firefox gracefully, and then started up Firefox for doing only the Refresh. However, if one had done other activities that caused a .sqlite file to grow and thus generate a .sqlite-wal overflow file, then a reset would used to cause a loss of data or corruption.

Alas, that would mean that if one was experiencing Firefox crashes that prevented Firefox from closing gracefully, so the .sqlite files never got closed cleanly, a Reset would compound the problems.

But, as I posted above, if I read the flags correctly, the bug has been fixed in versions 56, 57 and ESR 52, but was not fixed in 55. (Those on the Release Channel with automatic updates should have been updated to 56 by now, but I still see posts by those who decided to stay with 55, and they could potentially corrupt their profiles by a Reset.)

Like you, I have used Reset on a number of occasions in the past, but apparently, like you, didn't hit one of the conditions that caused profile corruption, at least not that I recall. However, I have created a new profile about once every three years, so maybe I had been corrupting my profile instead of my suspicion at that time that some old and obscure about:config setting rearing its head to cause problems with a more recent release of Firefox.
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DanRaisch
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Re: refreshing firefox is currently a bad idea

Post by DanRaisch »

Now that the bug has been squashed there's less to be concerned about with Refresh but it's still no better than using the Profile manager and rather more likely to confuse those not fully familiar with the concept of profiles.
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