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Why, starting with Firefox 46.0, is my profile not recognized anymore under Mac OS 10.11 if it has symlinks in it (e.g. places.sqlite is a symlink to a file)?

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Dear All,

After upgrading to Firefox 46.0 from Firefox 45.0.2 under Mac OS 10.11, my profile is not recognized anymore (that is, all history is empty, I can't restore the last session, and so on). This is due to the fact that some of the files in my profile are actually symbolic links to files in another directory. E.g., places.sqlite is a symbolic link to ../../../../some/other/dir/places.sqlite.

Indeed, if I create a new profile and copy the files of the old one into the new one, *but* taking care not to create symbolic links (e.g. I copy the destination of the symlink places.sqlite into the new profile and not the link itself), and start Firefox 46.0 with that new profile, I get back all my information (history and so on).

Was this observed by anybody else? I feel like reporting this behaviour as a bug.

Thanks!

Dear All, After upgrading to Firefox 46.0 from Firefox 45.0.2 under Mac OS 10.11, my profile is not recognized anymore (that is, all history is empty, I can't restore the last session, and so on). This is due to the fact that some of the files in my profile are actually symbolic links to files in another directory. E.g., places.sqlite is a symbolic link to ../../../../some/other/dir/places.sqlite. Indeed, if I create a new profile and copy the files of the old one into the new one, *but* taking care not to create symbolic links (e.g. I copy the destination of the symlink places.sqlite into the new profile and not the link itself), and start Firefox 46.0 with that new profile, I get back all my information (history and so on). Was this observed by anybody else? I feel like reporting this behaviour as a bug. Thanks!

Modified by James

All Replies (2)

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It sounds like you may have found a bug. If you report this on Bugzilla, the Firefox developers can certainly provide some more information on this issue and can probably help you resolve it.

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OK, thanks, I filed the bug report 1268842.

Modified by macosx12345