Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Talk about Mozilla browsers for small devices such as PDAs and cellphones.
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avada
Posts: 1932
Joined: February 10th, 2008, 6:30 am
Location: Hungary

Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by avada »

Hi!

I'm trying to downgrade, but that erases all data, so I need to back it up. Ridiculously I found no infor about where the data is stored...
JanH
Posts: 111
Joined: March 23rd, 2011, 1:19 pm

Re: Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by JanH »

/data/data/<package name>/files/mozilla, where <package name> is org.mozilla.firefox, org.mozilla.firefox_beta, org.mozilla.fennec_aurora or org.mozilla.fennec depending which channel (Release, Beta, Nightly since the last year or so and former Aurora installations, or old Nightly installations from before Aurora was discontinued) you're on.

However this directory is only accessible if you're either rooted or else by using a classic add-on (not a webextension, so unfortunately not viable on Release/Beta post-57) to do the exporting and importing for you. You'd have to write that add-on yourself, though, although you could use these two add-ons as inspiration. The former attempted to offer some minimal profile management on Android, while the other add-on actually exports your profile to the SD card and is just lacking import capabilities for the reverse procedure.
If neither applies, you're unfortunately out of luck, unless you want to try getting some patches for this bug accepted.
avada
Posts: 1932
Joined: February 10th, 2008, 6:30 am
Location: Hungary

Re: Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by avada »

JanH wrote:/data/data/<package name>/files/mozilla, where <package name> is org.mozilla.firefox, org.mozilla.firefox_beta, org.mozilla.fennec_aurora or org.mozilla.fennec depending which channel (Release, Beta, Nightly since the last year or so and former Aurora installations, or old Nightly installations from before Aurora was discontinued) you're on.

However this directory is only accessible if you're either rooted or else by using a classic add-on (not a webextension, so unfortunately not viable on Release/Beta post-57) to do the exporting and importing for you. You'd have to write that add-on yourself, though, although you could use these two add-ons as inspiration. The former attempted to offer some minimal profile management on Android, while the other add-on actually exports your profile to the SD card and is just lacking import capabilities for the reverse procedure.
If neither applies, you're unfortunately out of luck, unless you want to try getting some patches for this bug accepted.
Thanks. I have my phone rooted. At first I didn't find anything useful, because I didn't know I needed to look in further subfolders

I also found a program to downgrade without erasing the profile, but FF56 wouldn't run anymore. I guess ff58 crapped into it one way or another. Any idea what I need to change back or remove from the profile or Firefox settings to get v56 to work again?
avada
Posts: 1932
Joined: February 10th, 2008, 6:30 am
Location: Hungary

Re: Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by avada »

I see no places.sqlite. So where are bookmarks and history are stored?
JanH
Posts: 111
Joined: March 23rd, 2011, 1:19 pm

Re: Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by JanH »

browser.db in the main profile directory is the mobile equivalent for places.sqlite.

Since you're rooted, you could try using a logcat viewer (or just ADB from your computer) to look at the logcat logs as Firefox is starting up - if Firefox is crashing, you'd normally find a stack trace somewhere in there which might give you a clue what's going wrong.
I don't know whether such a thing actually happened between 56 and 58, but one possibility would be some backwards-incompatible database migration, which then causes the older Firefox to crash as it can't read that database "from the future" anymore.
avada
Posts: 1932
Joined: February 10th, 2008, 6:30 am
Location: Hungary

Re: Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by avada »

JanH wrote:browser.db in the main profile directory is the mobile equivalent for places.sqlite.
Thanks.
JanH wrote:I don't know whether such a thing actually happened between 56 and 58, but one possibility would be some backwards-incompatible database migration, which then causes the older Firefox to crash as it can't read that database "from the future" anymore.
Quite possible. Though it seems like ff56 doesn't even work as a fresh install. FF55 does though.

Can I use sync somehow to move bookmarks/history back to the old version?
avada
Posts: 1932
Joined: February 10th, 2008, 6:30 am
Location: Hungary

Re: Where's the profile folder and how do I back it up?

Post by avada »

I managed to enable sync, so now I at least have bookmarks and history. Though FF55 seems to be a tad crashy.
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