Why is Firefox losing my bookmarks?

March 1, 2009 6:37 PM

Why is Firefox randomly reverting to old versions of my bookmarks lists?

I'm using Firefox 3.0.6. on a MacBook (OS 10.5.5.) Recently, I've been having trouble with my bookmarks list. For example, if today I saved 3 new bookmarks, deleted 2 more, and moved 1 from a folder to a toolbar, I could come back tomorrow and find everything the way it was yesterday. Saved bookmarks gone, deleted bookmarks restored, everything in the old location. What is causing this? Firefox has not been shutting down unexpectedly. It's a serious pain in the rear- it happened again today and I lost all sorts of things I had saved in the last few days that I really did not want to lose.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Are you running any add-ons like Foxmarks?
posted by Science! at 6:40 PM on March 1

No.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:50 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

FF 3 bookmarks are saved in your profile directory, the in the file places.sqlite. Under OSX I think FF runs as a virtual disk, which gets uncompressed on the fly; it's possible your changes to sqllite are being written to the temporarily uncompressed version, which is then deleted/overwritten.
posted by orthogonality at 7:00 PM on March 1

Your bookmarks file is corrupt, and so firefox is reverting to the backup... every time.

Export your bookmarks to a regular old HTML file somewhere (Bookmarks > Organize > Export). Quit Firefox, REMOVE the existing bookmarks file (and its backup) from your Profile folder. Run Firefox again and Import that exported bookmarks file.

Enjoy happiness. :)
posted by rokusan at 8:52 PM on March 1

Under OSX I think FF runs as a virtual disk

Huh? If true, that's news to me.

Are any changes being saved at all? Perhaps the permissions on the places.sqlite file got messed up and FF can read but not write to it?
posted by pmbuko at 9:02 PM on March 1

It's kind of two steps forward, one step back- it's not always going back to the same old list, just an older version than what should be the most recent list. Tomorrow, I'm going to do as rokusan suggests and hopefully this will fix the problem forever.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:36 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

I've this problem and I suspect it has something to do with the official del.icio.us add-on, even though it's not set up to do anything to my regular bookmarks. I've found backing up my bookmarks through the Organize Bookmarks window (Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks) keeps it from reverting.

It could also be a corrupt bookmarks file or a permissions problem that the Organize Bookmarks stuff fixes, though.
posted by immlass at 7:40 AM on March 2

Ok, deleted the old Firefox bookmarks file (instructions on where those files are at this link, for future reference). Hopefully that will be the end of that! Thank you all.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:43 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]