Firefox 145 - all extensions disappeared from toolbar

[sdbbs]

I updated to Firefox 145.0.2 (64-bit) using mozilla .deb on Ubuntu 22.04, now all the extensions that I had on my toolbar are gone.

My Firefox always starts with ProfileManager, so I know I’m using the same profile as before.

If I click on the extensions button on the toolbar, I get some stupid “Level up” popup:

If I go to about:addons the extensions are still there, seemingly enabled - e.g. Cast Kodi should have been a button on the toolbar:

( Oh, great - just after I took the above screenshot, now ALL my extensions from about:addons are gone. What is going on? I’ll try to restart the browser and continue this post later … )

Ok, after browser restart, still the same situation - I just wanted to post that when I click Manage on Cast Kodi, I get this:

… just to note that it has remembered its permission to Run in Private Windows which is what I usually use.

What is going on, and how can I get my addon icons to appear in the toolbar again? Preferably without starting a new profile and installing them again manually, as I already wasted an hour of my life on this (not mentioning thousands of hours I’ve already wasted in my life on crap like this)?

[sdbbs]

Well, it’s a shame I cannot edit the OP anymore, as the problem turned out to be due to my attempt at using a single profile folder cross-platform, not necessarily due to update to Firefox 145. Although … maybe this update had something to do with this, since I’ve been using a single profile folder cross-platform since at least 2021, and I have not experienced this problem until now.

Anyways: the thing is, I have a PC, where I have a Windows 10 (NTFS) partition, Ubuntu 20.04 (ext3) partition, and a shared partition (FAT32) automounted on both systems; the shared partition has a FFProfiles folder, which contains my main Firefox profile directory; and the respective paths are:

• Windows: D:\FFProfiles\MyFFProfile
• Linux: /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile

Note that I first noticed the problem in Ubuntu, after having dual booted in Windows (and performing a Firefox update there); cannot recall if the Ubuntu Firefox update was before or after the Windows one.

So, first I tried the following, which did not really lead to a solution: I created a new empty Firefox profile, and only installed Cast Kodi there; then I wanted to compare differences in profile folder files between entries related to this addon. Here I noticed that there is a “Pin extension to toolbar” checkbox upon addon installation:

… which I could not remember from previously, so I thought it might have been the cause of my problems (maybe it was a new setting in about:config).

Looking at files that may have contained information about the newly installed addon, at this time, I thought only these two files are related:

• MyFFProfile/extension-preferences.json; however it just contains this:

...
    "castkodi@regseb.github.io":
    {
      "permissions":["internal:privateBrowsingAllowed","<all_urls>"],
      "origins":["<all_urls>"],
      "data_collection":[]
    },
...

• MyFFProfile/prefs.js; however it only seems to contain the list of addons that should appear on the toolbar (or rather, nav-bar - apparently the “Pin extension to toolbar” checkbox ends up being recorded here, if needed):

...
user_pref("browser.uiCustomization.state",
  "{\"placements\":
    {
      \"widget-overflow-fixed-list\":[],
      \"unified-extensions-area\":[...],
      \"nav-bar\":[\"back-button\",...,\"castkodi_regseb_github_io-browser-action\",...],
      \"toolbar-menubar\":[\"menubar-items\"],
      \"TabsToolbar\":[\"firefox-view-button\",...,\"alltabs-button\"],
      \"vertical-tabs\":[],
      \"PersonalToolbar\":[\"import-button\",\"personal-bookmarks\"]
    },
    \"seen\":[\"developer-button\",...,\"castkodi_regseb_github_io-browser-action\",...],
    \"dirtyAreaCache\":[\"nav-bar\",...,\"vertical-tabs\"],
    \"currentVersion\":23,
    \"newElementCount\":2
  }");
...

---

Then, I thought, there must be some Firefox addons startup logs, which I could check out when I start my Firefox with the old/original profile; I found https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12893981/logging-to-console-from-firefox-extension :

From Firefox 31 onwards you can use the “Enable persistent logs” setting to prevent the Network Monitor from clearing the list on reload.

… now, you need to click the gear icon on the far right side for the option to appear.

This answer may have gone out of date again. On Firefox 128.0 I had to set “extensions.sdk.console.logLevel” to “all”, restart, use the Browser Console (not the standard Developer Console) and the new step is: at the top of the Browser Console window I had to change Browser Console Mode from Parent process only to Multiprocess. There is no longer a “Show Content Messages” option. Not sure if this applies to all plugins - this was for a Sidebar plugin.

Note that on Firefox 145, my extensions.logging.enabled remained at false; extensions.sdk.console.logLevel by default does not exist; my Browser Console Mode was still at “Parent process only”; and all I had to do was to enable “Persist Logs” via the gear icon of the Developer Tools Console; restart Firefox - and then find this in the Browser Console (not the standard Developer Console):

Error while loading 'jar:file:///D:/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions/castkodi@regseb.github.io.xpi!/manifest.json' (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) Extension.sys.mjs:1162:20

readJSON resource://gre/modules/Extension.sys.mjs:1162
    onStopRequest resource://gre/modules/NetUtil.sys.mjs:124

1764842259495	addons.xpi	WARN	Exception running bootstrap method startup on castkodi@regseb.github.io: Error: Error while loading 'jar:file:///D:/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions/castkodi@regseb.github.io.xpi!/manifest.json' (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)(resource://gre/modules/Extension.sys.mjs:1162:20) JS Stack trace: readJSON/</<@Extension.sys.mjs:1162:20
onStopRequest@NetUtil.sys.mjs:124:18

Oh well: I see an error for a Windows path here - even though I’m running Firefox on Linux! So, it seems obvious that the difference in path format is the problem …

It turns out, the Firefox Profile folder was never intended to be fully cross-platform (which makes me wonder how was I able to use it for years in that manner, without experiencing this problem of disappearing addon toolbar buttons?!); for instance Are Firefox profiles platform independant? | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support:

Not 100% compatible. Some preferences in the prefs.js file (basically files paths from what I have observed) and some files added by add-ons may not be entirely compatible.

Also It is easy to export the whole Firefox profile from Windows to Linux : r/firefox:

Get rid of the content-prefs.sqlite file from the windows import. Whether that would fix it, not sure yet.

Anyways, after some trial and error, I found that there are mixed paths in MyFFProfile/extensions.json:

$ grep -oP '"[^"]*MyFFProfile[^"]*"' /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions.json
...
"D:\\FFProfiles\\MyFFProfile\\extensions\\castkodi@regseb.github.io.xpi"
"jar:file:///D:/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions/castkodi@regseb.github.io.xpi!/"
...
"D:\\FFProfiles\\MyFFProfile\\extensions\\cliget@zaidabdulla.com.xpi"
"jar:file:///D:/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions/cliget@zaidabdulla.com.xpi!/"
...

… and that there are also mixed paths in the webext.sc.lz4 and addonStartup.json.lz4 cached Firefox profile files, which I identified by grepping like so:

$ grep -rl MyFFProfile /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile
/media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/sessionstore-logs/error-sessionrestore-1764232819809.txt
/media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/startupCache/urlCache.bin
/media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/startupCache/webext.sc.lz4
/media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions.json

$  grep -ao '....D:....' /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/addonStartup.json.lz4
:///D:/FFP

… and the fix was:

1. Close / shut down Firefox

2. Change the Windows paths in MyFFProfile/extensions.json to Linux ones - which I had to do in two passes:

   $ sed -b -i'' 's!/D:/FFProfiles/!/media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/!g' /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions.json
   
   $ sed -b -i'' 's!D:\\\\FFProfiles\\\\MyFFProfile\\\\extensions\\\\!/media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions/!g' /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/extensions.json
   

3. Delete the webext.sc.lz4 and addonStartup.json.lz4 cached Firefox profile files:

   rm /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/startupCache/webext.sc.lz4 /media/UserName/SharedFAT32/FFProfiles/MyFFProfile/addonStartup.json.lz4
   

4. Start Firefox again with the MyFFProfile profile

… and finally - my extension icons are back on the toolbar, and everything worksforme as before!

Well, I wish this was an easier problem to solve, and I did not have to waste all these hours to solve this …