Close to dead in the water: Bookmmarks & History

[Uppity]

Edit: When I clicked on the "More Information" link,

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http://www.palemoon.org/support/places-locked

Edit, Again: I tried to restore Bookmarks with FEBE, but it didn't work.
FEBE just screamed...

Following that link, I got a 404 error message:

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not on this server

and one of the links to me to the PM home page.

This is the error message, when I open or restart PM:

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Bookmmarks & History system will not be functional because one of PMs files is in use by another application. Some security software can cause this problem.

I first got this earlier, as I was trying to salvage an SD card and a micro-SD card. On restart, on reboot and restarting the browser, I seem to be stuck.

Another error message says my

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root file is out of space.

I had also tried to update PM, but the installer would only open in Gedit.
I tried the installer in a terminal and that didn't work.
I tried the installer as root and that didn't work.

I opened Firefox and the same thing. No history & no bookmarks.

What have I done. I have no clue and don't know what to do...

[Night Wing]

This is just a shot in the dark since all the installation methods you've tried, have failed. Below is the instructions for linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu. I chose Mint because I use Mint and you didn't state what linux distro you're using. Its very frustrating when people don't give out what linux distro they're using. Not telling what distro you're using leaves us all the people trying to help you, in the dark.

Did you try and use the "extract & run" method? This is where you download the PM tarball. Then right click on the tarball and when when a windows opens up, left click on "Extract Here". This extracts the "palemoon" folder. Then double left click on the folder which opens the folder in a window. Then scroll on down to the sub folder named, "palemoon" and it contains the executable file. Then right click on the sub palemoon folder and when the window opens up, left click on the word, "Execute" and see if linux Pale Moon opens and runs.

[Uppity]

Hi, Night Wing.

My Linux version is in my signature, but the sig is not up to date.
I am running version 17.2 and PM version 25.6.0 (x64).

I had not thought of the tar ball idea, but I will certainly try it.
I have doubts because Firefox has the same issues.

I started the download, but the download manager does not show it. There is a new tar ball file name in the download folder, but it is empty and there is no companion file that usually appears with downloads.

Another issue is I can not download images, at least from a site to which I am currently logged in.

This is a completely new thing that I've never seen.
It is hard to tell whether the issue is a browser problem or an operating system problem. Seems it could be either or both or a hybrid.

[squarefractal]

Did you try and use the "extract & run" method?

This method of yours will run into the same problem since Pale Moon stores its profile contents into ~/.moonchild productions/pale moon, regardless of its location or "installation status".

Open up a terminal window and run the following commands:

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sudo chown -hR $USER: "~/.moonchild productions"
chmod -R +rw "~/.moonchild productions"

... which should hopefully fix the issue by setting the proper permissions for all the files.

[Uppity]

Hi, squarefractal.

I tried and failed.
I can not download files or pictures, so was thinking about double clicking on the last good downloaded tar ball, version 24.7.2 dated September 20, 2014.

The hope was to get a good install, then update.

Would that work?
May be that something went wrong with Linux Mint... ?

When I open a terminal, the old profile is gone.
Only the default profile is available on a right click.

I had a white background, but it is now black.
The menu was also gone, so I restored it.

Here is the result from your suggestion:

sudo chown -hR $USER: "~/.moonchild productions"
chmod -R +rw "~/.moonchild productions"

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No such file or directory

profile.ini dated May 28, 2015

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[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=h0w49fu2.default

[squarefractal]

Please try removing the quotes from the commands. It should be:

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sudo chown -hR $USER: ~/.moonchild productions
chmod -R +rw ~/.moonchild productions

LPMO needs an update, I think

[Uppity]

I caught that and tried both ways, and failed.

Just tried again:

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 No such file or directory

[SvenG]

What have I done. I have no clue and don't know what to do...

Did you maybe run Pale Moon as root (sudo palemoon)? That would be a bad idea and can cause such issues cause files that should be owned by you are owned by root and you have no access. In case you did that, please never do that again with any graphical application cause it can do serious damage to your user account. Usually, there is no need to do that and in case there ever should be need, there are ways to do it right. Also performing any file operation in your profile as root can lead to such issues. It can be repaired but can be real PITA.

I caught that and tried both ways, and failed.

Can you please give us the output of ls -lFhp ~/.moonchild\ productions/.

[Uppity]

Hi, SvenG.

No, I do not run Pale Moon as root.

It is in the right panel, near the Mint menu.
It was placed there when I made it the default browser.

$ ls -lFhp ~/.moonchild\ productions/

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total 4.0K
drwxr-xr-x 3 gt gt 4.0K Aug  1 20:48 pale moon/

[Uppity]

I'm calling it a day and will be back late Monday.

Thank you Night Wing, squarefractal and SvenG.

I'm glad we have an alternative to Firefox and promote Pale Moon, when I can. From a discussion on the Mint forums, looks like they are trying to kill Firefox, intentionally. That should bode well for Pale Moon.

[SvenG]

Hmmm, doesn't look too bad (gt is your account name, I assume).

So, if I get that right, we have two different issues:
1. you cannot update Pale Moon
2. you can not start it (most likely due to account/profile issues)
Is that right?

We can do 1 later, think we first need to focus on your profile. It's a bit irritating that you have the same problem on Pale Moon and on Firefox, so unless you did the same weird thing to both profiles that should not happen. At least not easily.

I assume you already tried to simply reboot the system and start Pale Moon (just to exclude temporary issues caused by Gremlins or sunspots)?

EDIT: (see the last paragraph and Moonchilds post after mine) check disk space first by running df. If "root file is out of space." means that you are running out of space you should try to fix that first.

Can you try to create a new profile using palemoon -p (that should open the profile manager) and if you can create a new profile, can you do anything with it?

If it works, copy places.sqlite from your old profile to the new one. If that leads to the same problems, your places.sqlite is most likely broken. The only thing you can do about that is delete places.sqlite (backup first!) and replace it with an earlier version if you have one (you were talking about FEBE, maybe that has stored something useful), if you don't have one you should at least be able to recover your bookmarks from the latest *.json file in bookmarkbackups. That should work on Firefox as well.

This "root file is out of space." is still a bit irritating (even Google doesn't know it , well, once but that is in this thread). Did you copy that message or is it just from memory? Could it mean that you are running out of disk space (you can run df to check)?

[Moonchild]

Maybe it is "root filesystem is out of space" -- a full disk will cause all sorts of colorful errors in Linux.

[SvenG]

Maybe it is "root filesystem is out of space" -- a full disk will cause all sorts of colorful errors in Linux.

Yes, moved that part to the first position, everything else wouldn't make sense in case the disk is full. Possible cause

I first got this earlier, as I was trying to salvage an SD card and a micro-SD card.

went wrong and flooded the hard drive.

[raindress]

just tried linux mint a few weeks ago & was about to delete it as lost bookmarks & history in both PM & FF.with PM got your message about "another application".noticed that there was a package update for FF but it refused to install. having tried my limited knowledge,decided to uninstall FF..when I opened PM all my bookmarks/history settings returned.dont know if this helps or is the answer but worked for me.

[SvenG]

noticed that there was a package update for FF but it refused to install.

That shouldn't happen, surely indicates that something is borked. Usually, you would get a rather detailed error message from apt-get or in Synaptics' terminal window (or whatever you use). If you have the exact message and don't know what it means, simply copy it and give Google something to do, usually, you will find any error message. Also Pale Moon and Firefox have nothing in common except for plugins (unless Mozilla has changed something recently and is trying to sabotage us ).... did you check your disk space?

[Uppity]

Hi, SvenG.
Checking in on a live version.

Yes, gt is my account name.
I copied the error messages.
I usually try to preface my comments when from my own recall.

There should be no issues with disk space.

I run from /sdb2 - a 32 GB SSD.
I store nothing on this device, other than the operating system.

While trying to salvage the SD and micro SD cards, I was having permission issues and was unable to change the owner from root to gt, even from elevated permissions - sudo.

I was getting 'read only' error, in the process.

There were some unusual files on the SD cards.
I could not open then and I could not delete them.
I'm not sure, but I may have managed to delete the folder.

So, it took a little effort, but I finally managed to get them reformatted to fat32. I think I managed to do that with Gparted. Similar problem another time, I managed a format from the file manager - right click.

From what I understand, this is an indication that the SD cards are wearing out.

That would make sense in that the SD card was used in a trail camera for about 14 months, occasionally swapping out with a different SD card. The micro SD card was 8 GB from a dash camera.

At one point, I did open Firefox, briefly.

I'm about to reboot from /sdb and will be back...

This is from the df command, in terminal, from the live version:
I can't see the hard drive or the SSD, though that could be my untrained eye.

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$ df
Filesystem                  1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
aufs                          2995448   179980   2815468   7% /
tmpfs                          599092     1096    597996   1% /run
/dev/disk/by-uuid/4309-2492  15680144  7007136   8673008  45% /lib/live/mount/fromiso
/dev/loop0                    1535584  1535584         0 100% /lib/live/mount/medium
/dev/loop1                    1387648  1387648         0 100% /lib/live/mount/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs
tmpfs                         2995448        0   2995448   0% /lib/live/mount/overlay
tmpfs                            5120        4      5116   1% /run/lock
devtmpfs                        10240        0     10240   0% /dev
tmpfs                         1198160     1188   1196972   1% /run/shm
tmpfs                         2995448        4   2995444   1% /tmp
cgroup                             12        0        12   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
cgmfs                             100        0       100   0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs                          599092       32    599060   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/mmcblk0p1               15549952 12291936   3258016  80% /media/mint/BACKUP

[Uppity]

I'm back, logged in on /sdb2.
In the file manager tree, File System is showing 0 free space.

A certified Windows man just advised me to reinstall Linux...

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The Volume 'Filesystem root' has only 0 bytes disk space remaining.
You can free up disk space by emptying the Trash, removing unused programs or files, or moving files to another disk or partition.

I got this yesterday and of the 3 options, I selected "Empty Trash".
It made no difference.
The other 2 options were Examine and Ignore

I could not make much sense out of the Disk Usage Analyzer.
Just now, I chose to examine from the Disk Usage Analyzer and / is showing

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100% usage: 43.8 GB, Contents: 276658 items.

Could not scan folder "/" or some of the folders it contains.

The browser is still showing the error message on red background, white letters:

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The bookmarks and history system will not be functional because one of Pale Moon's files is in use by another application. Some security software can cause this problem.

I clicked the option to Learn More:

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404 - Page not found
The document you have requested does not exist on this server.
Please check your URL and try again!
You can also go to the homepage instead.
Firefox, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla are registered trademarks of the Mozilla Corporation.
The Pale Moon product/project names and logo are a trademark™ of Moonchild Productions.
Site and contents © 2009-2015 Moonchild Productions - All rights reserved
Pale Moon's distribution is subject to the following redistribution license
This site uses Cookies - Your usage indicates your consent to their use.

Now, the df command from terminal, which lost its profile, as well:

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$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2       23975532 23932288         0 100% /
none                   4        0         4   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev             2972352        4   2972348   1% /dev
tmpfs             597584     1428    596156   1% /run
none                5120        0      5120   0% /run/lock
none             2987912      980   2986932   1% /run/shm
none              102400        8    102392   1% /run/user
/dev/sdb1         425136    40636    384500  10% /boot/efi
overflow            1024       20      1004   2% /tmp
/dev/sdc1       15680144  7007136   8673008  45% /media/gt/multisystem
/dev/mmcblk0p1  15549952 12291936   3258016  80% /media/gt/BACKUP

[squarefractal]

Well, there you have it:

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/dev/sdb2       23975532 23932288         0 100% /

Unless you have a separate partition for /home, this is going to cause a problem. Also, please do free up some space on /dev/sdb2.

[Uppity]

Boot, root and swap are the only partitions on the SSD.

The only way I can see to free up some space on /sdb2, is to delete files.
But, I do not use it for storage. Just the operating system and applications.

Does this indicate a need to reinstall Mint?
Lots of confusion about using a Home partition. Some say yes, others say no.
So, I'm wondering if I should add a Home partition?

[SvenG]

No, it doesn't mean you have to reinstall. Try to see if any of these things
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/4
work like removing old kernels (they are like 250 MB each) or deleting files from cache.

EDIT: As for the /home partition. With 32 GB of SSD space it's use is limited. Besides the obvious data /home contains a lot of hidden files and folder that store cache and settings and you might find it desirable to have them on the fast drive. And just cutting the SSD into more slices doesn't make it larger and that is the problem here. In fact 32 GB for a Linux system isn't that small, usually, you should be able to even store a bit of data on it, even with about 6 GB of swap. I think something here went just terribly wrong.