Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

Trist · 2015-01-07 10:33:53

Yesterday I had decided I would clean up a bit. Lets just say I was running low on memory. I saw .cache in ~ and thought "its just cache, and is relatively large", so I deleted it. Now Firefox refuses to open, outputting this error.

"Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

I tried uninstalling, deleting profiles.ini found in ~/.mozilla/firefox (which after reopening firefox, no new profile is created), I have tried deleting the entire .mozilla folder, and yeah I rebooted. I tried using sudo pacman -Sc, and bleachbit didn't help either. Sudo firefox works fine, but for obvious reasons I don't want to use that everytime. I tried copying the .mozilla folder from root into my home then changing the owner to me, but it didn't work.

I searched the forums for the quoted error above but found nothing relevant in the eight pages, and of course googled to find similar problems which their solutions did not help me.

Last edited by Trist (2015-01-07 20:45:00)

dice · 2015-01-07 11:23:51

Did you try creating a new profile with the profile manager?

firefox --profilemanager

Last edited by dice (2015-01-07 11:24:04)

Trist · 2015-01-07 11:32:23

I didn't. However when I try it, I still get the error message

"Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

karol · 2015-01-07 12:00:49

Can you create a new profile or do you get just the error message? How about 'firefox -ProfileManager'?

Trist · 2015-01-07 12:11:54

It does not appear that I can. Typing, in terminal, 'firefox --profilemanager' yields the same exact error message. I also tried the case sensitive way you wrote it too, just for completion, and got the same error.

Trist · 2015-01-07 12:24:21

Ah fixed it. I went ahead and tried to manually create the .cache folder, but got the error of it already existing. Apparently there was a file named .cache in ~ which wasn't a folder that for some reason was keeping the folder from being created again after deletion. Renaming it fixed it. Thanks for the help.

Alad · 2015-01-07 17:16:32

^ Hm, how did a .cache *file* get there? Just curious.

Trist · 2015-01-07 19:03:58

It was entirely a user created problem. I would rather not go into the specifics but I had previously created a file named .cache without knowing it would actually prevent the creation of a .cache folder after I deleted it and thus didn't know it would create such a problem. I found out the problem by actually trying to create the .cache directory with mkdir in my terminal emulator, when I was hit with the error ".cache already exists".

Alad · 2015-01-07 19:08:41

Ok, thought it was some weird bug

Trist · 2015-01-07 19:42:48

Just curious, though it isn't really relevant to the topic of the thread, I just wouldn't be able to ask anyone about it. Is not being able to create a folder if something with the same name exists in the father folder a feature or a bug? Or is it only a problem with files without an extension?

alex.theoto · 2015-01-07 20:21:41

And I have a question for you... Why profile's name start with [dot]?

It might be a bug but don't try this anymore...
Just to think of it, firefox created a user with [dot] at the beginning and when you tried to run the program, it tryed to find '.cache/mozilla/firefox/.cache' or even '.mozilla/firefox/.cache' user where it is hidden folder and probably that's why it gave an error.

~/.cache folder keep some temporarily (cache) files for the user's programs. You can remove it from time to time if you like... (I think you have to logout and delete the .cache's folders from tty2 so it will not be in use _ maybe I'm wrong_)

Don't forget to mark your port as [SOLVED]

Last edited by alex.theoto (2015-01-07 20:32:50)

Slithery · 2015-01-07 20:22:23

Trist wrote:

Is not being able to create a folder if something with the same name exists in the father folder a feature or a bug?

It's not a feature or a bug, just common sense.
If you could have a file and a folder with the same name, how is your system meant to know which one you are talking about?

Or is it only a problem with files without an extension?

File extensions in Linux are meaningless, but a directory foo and a file foo.xxx obviously have different names.
You can give a directory name an extension if you wanted to but it would still conflict with a file of the same name

Last edited by Slithery (2015-01-07 20:27:35)

Trist · 2015-01-07 20:44:24

To alex, my profile doesn't start with a dot. That was the filename of a file in the folder immediately within my profile's folder. And I wont be doing it again of course, now that I know. I was just curious. I will be sure to mark it as solved.

To slithery, I am still relatively new to Linux. Only began a month ago directly from Windows and didn't know. It wasn't very common sense to me since, probably because of the mandatory extensions, Windows was able to create folders with the same name, and also because that had never happened to me before. I understand that extensions are 'meaningless' in Linux, I didn't know folders and files weren't interpreted differently.

alex.theoto · 2015-01-07 21:21:51

Sorry I didn't understand right...

Good luck on linux...

Last edited by alex.theoto (2015-01-07 21:30:32)

Arch Linux

#1 2015-01-07 10:33:53

Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#2 2015-01-07 11:23:51

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#3 2015-01-07 11:32:23

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#4 2015-01-07 12:00:49

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#5 2015-01-07 12:11:54

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#6 2015-01-07 12:24:21

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#7 2015-01-07 17:16:32

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#8 2015-01-07 19:03:58

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#9 2015-01-07 19:08:41

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#10 2015-01-07 19:42:48

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#11 2015-01-07 20:21:41

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#12 2015-01-07 20:22:23

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#13 2015-01-07 20:44:24

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

#14 2015-01-07 21:21:51

Re: Firefox Issue [SOLVED]

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