Firefox 1.0.1 & XUL.mfasl

[Anthony Edwards]

I have today begun using Firefox 1.0.1 after an upgrade from SuSE 8.2 to 9.2. The Firefox version that I am using is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050224 Firefox/1.0.1, installed from an official SuSE RPM available at:

http://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/mozill ... /9.2-i386/

This has, though, what seems to be a very annoying bug. Each time the browser is closed, on next opening the bookmarks are gone. They can be restored by closing the browser again, going to the default (only) profile folder and deleting XUL.mfasl. This has to be done each and every time the browser is closed, or the next time it is opened, the bookmarks are not visible.

I have tried backing up three files (the $RANDOM_NUMBER.s file where usernames and password are stored, bookmarks.html & cookies.txt), deleting ~/.mozilla completely (rm -r .mozilla), then running Firefox again, and restoring $RANDOM_NUMBER.s, bookmarks.html & cookies.txt to the new default profile directory. This still doesn't cure the problem, and XUL.mfasl still has to be manually deleted each time after the browser is closed in order for the bookmarks to be viewable next time the browser is opened.

Is there a workaround for this, or is it a bug with the software, and/or the particular SuSE packaged RPM?

[Guest]

I have resolved this temporarily (100% effective to date) by:

anthony@catfish:~> cat bin/foxstart
#!/bin/bash
rm ~/.mozilla/firefox/86j5zlye.default/XUL.mfasl ; firefox

In /usr/share/blackbox/menu:

[submenu] (Internet) {}
[submenu] (Browser) {}
[exec] (Firefox) {foxstart}

This may assist anyone else experiencing the issue with Mozilla 1.0.1 on Unix/Linux, hopefully although, since it seems to be an intrinsic Firefox 1.0.1 bug (I wonder if a similar bug exists in the Windows variants, which may be causing some of the bookmarks related issues that Firefox 1.0.1 Windows users are reporting?), hopefully it will be fixed properly in the next release/version.