[conspire] Firefox troubles after moving to Debian Buster: how can I use my old profile?!

Fri Mar 13 02:10:02 PDT 2020

Hi Rick,

Thanks!

In my panic, I had completely missed that part about using the URI
'about:profiles',
it works great!

When I went in there, I immediately saw that my old profile wasn't the
default,
and Firefox had made a new empty profile (with the "-esr" extension) and
set
_that_ profile as the default, alongside my old profile which was also
still there
(except that it was not the default, which seems a really weird choice).

There was a tempting button [Make Default]  next to my old profile
and I used that button to make my old profile the default one.
Once I had done that, and launched a new Firefox session,
and closed the old one, Firefox happily let me delete the
empty "-esr" profile.

So now I'm "back to normal" again (although somewhat nerve-wracked
that the developers would find such convoluted steps amusing).
Maybe they think it's a good way to teach their users about this
new "separate profiles" feature, although I'd have preferred a
slightly less jarring introduction to it.

Thanks,
Peter.

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 11:47 PM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Peter Knaggs (peter.knaggs at gmail.com):
>
> > I've been on Firefox 68.0 on Ubuntu 18.10 for a while,
> > but then it suddenly stopped being upgradable, so
> > in an attempt to go back to using Debian I installed
> > Debian 10 (buster) on a different machine and
> > copied my .mozilla directory across from my
> > Ubuntu 18.10 machine.
> >
> > But now when I launch Firefox 85.5.0esr
> > in Debian 10, I'm running into this curious trouble,
> > it's giving me this message:
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > This installation of Firefox has a new profile.
> > It does not share bookmarks, passwords and
> > user preferences with other installations of
> > Firefox (including Firefox, Firefox ESR, Firefox
> > Beta, Firefox Developer Edition, and Firefox
> > Nightly) on this computer.
> >
> > To sync information you've already saved to Firefox with this
> > installation of Firefox, sign in with your Firefox Account.
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Hi, Peter!  First, to be clear, this problem is brand-new to me,
> so if others here have encountered it, they can probably give you
> more-intelligent comments than I can.
>
> Searching the diagnostic message, what I see is a claim that 'this is
> only supposed to happen if the installation directory is changing',
> i.e., the new version of Firefox is searching for .mozilla trees
> somewhere different from where the former version did.  (But I suspect
> that's not it.)
>
> I also see a suggestion of loading URI 'about:profiles', seeing if
> perchance there are now _multiple_ profiles (Firefox having erroneously
> added one), and trying setting the second profile as your main profile,
> in hopes that the second profile is your real one.  I think that sounds
> promising, so I'd definitely try that first before anything else.  I
> have a hunch that's it.
>
>
>
> > If Firefox is going to be making strange decisions
> > like this, seemingly abandoning their "on-premises" users,
> > it looks like it's time to switch to something else...
> >
> > What browser would you recommend for folks who have
> > to manage their profile information locally on their own machine?
>
> Quite a lot of people have been unhappy for various reasons about
> _numerous_ Firefox changes starting with v. 48 in autumn 2016, not least
> the jarring decision to make Firefox unwilling to load extensions
> that aren't crypto-signed by Mozilla, Inc. at http://addons.mozilla.org/
> was one, and the sudden dropping of all XUL/XPCOM support with only
> relatively cruddy and markedly more limited WebExtensions API support as
> a substitute.  And there have been other dissatisfactions that aren't
> immediately coming to mind.  Personally, the requirement for
> mandatory crypto-signing (signing by them but not by, say, me) was the
> deal-breaker for me.
>
> Of course, it's possible that if you get the profile thing under
> control, those bits of other people's disgruntlement will matter less to
> you.
>
> Here's what I wrote on the question you posed (well, on at least a
> related question) recently on Devuan Project's Dng mailing list:
>
>
>
> Quoting golinux at devuan.org (golinux at devuan.org):
>
> > Just great! So how can we keep off this cloudflare thing?
> >
> >
> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/25/mozilla_turns_on_dns_over_https_by_default
> _for_usa/
> <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/25/mozilla_turns_on_dns_over_https_by_default_for_usa/>
> >
> > Rick Moen?  Anyone?
>
> It's been obviously coming (for newer Firefox versions) for quite some
> time.  Since my _personal_ view is that Firefox (Release Edition and
> Beta) went unacceptably off the rails starting with Firefox 48 on
> 2016-08-02 (and similar damage to Firefox ESR then being only a matter
> of time), I see this as unfortunate but as just another nail in the
> coffin.
>
> As noted in TheReg's article (and linked Mozilla blog item), the new
> DoH default in Firefox 73.0.1 can be simply unchecked somewhere in
> the program's Settings (for now).
>
> Also, for those who care about new Firefox versions but haven't read the
> coverage, it should be noted that the new default is (claimed to be) set
> only in downloadable binary versions of the browser offered at
> mozilla.org to USA users, not to those elsewhere in the world.
>
> The direct effect on Linux users would be only on distros that do no
> meaningful curating and correcion of Mozilla, Inc.'s sometimes brainless
> defaults in their distro packages.  (I really have no idea if the Debian
> distro package of Firefox Release Edition suffers this brain damage,
> having lost interest, as I said, some years back.  Perhaps someone else
> here knows.
>
> (Seriously, I really, really wish either Debian or someone else would
> gather together as much as possible of the 'No, we don't accept
> mandatory extension signing and are not thrilled about losing XUL/XPCOM
> without a lot better planning' consensus under one roof under revived
> brand identity 'Iceweasel'.  Seems like an obvious solution, to me --
> and, to correct myself just a bit, in a way, it's almost-sorta happened:
> the several little scattershot Firefox pre-57 forks include Pale Moon,
> Basilisk, Waterfox, Iceweasel-UXP, Iceape-UXP, and Borealis Navigator.
>
> For those who are unfamiliar with Iceweasel-UXP, I recommend reading
> their lucid and brief explanation:
> https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:project:iceweasel-uxp
> (But, seriously, IMO they should call it 'Iceweasel', which is a peculiar
> enough name without the suffix, but at least has a history.)
>
>
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