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i transfered my mac to a new mac (OS X) using the Apple tranfer product my Firefox will not save bookmarks

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by ULTech

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I have an old iMac with OS 10.11. I bought a new Imac, i used Apple's tool that lets you use Time Machine backup to transfer data, apps, etc to new iMAC. It worked awesome, new iMac had all i wanted except one glitch. My Firefox (ver 57.01) will not save any new Bookmarks. I have all my old bookmarks. I click the star in the address bar to add a new bookmark, but nothing happens. I try to use pulldown menu "bookmark this page", nothing happens no reaction. I"ve tried to go into safe mode i've done a firefox reset. i've removed and or disabled all extenstions and plug-ins I wasnt using Pocket in previous iMac. I don't want to blow everything away because I like how everything is set up in Firefox, i dont want to trash that.

I'm thinking maybe it's a permission setting on the library\application support\firefox\profiles on new iMac ? can't write ?

I have an old iMac with OS 10.11. I bought a new Imac, i used Apple's tool that lets you use Time Machine backup to transfer data, apps, etc to new iMAC. It worked awesome, new iMac had all i wanted except one glitch. My Firefox (ver 57.01) will not save any new Bookmarks. I have all my old bookmarks. I click the star in the address bar to add a new bookmark, but nothing happens. I try to use pulldown menu "bookmark this page", nothing happens no reaction. I"ve tried to go into safe mode i've done a firefox reset. i've removed and or disabled all extenstions and plug-ins I wasnt using Pocket in previous iMac. I don't want to blow everything away because I like how everything is set up in Firefox, i dont want to trash that. I'm thinking maybe it's a permission setting on the library\application support\firefox\profiles on new iMac ? can't write ?

Chosen solution

This has been resolved. What i did was create a new blank firefox profile, then copy the places.sqllite and other files from the "corrupt" profile, I made that new profile as default and that seemed to correct my inability to save bookmarks while still maintaining my bookmark library and other cached info.

thank you for all your help folks.

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All Replies (5)

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If the permissions are incorrect, there's a good chance that would cause something like what you're seeing. In order to check the permissions, you can do this:

  1. Close Firefox.
  2. Open the finder.
  3. Open the "Go" menu > Go to Folder
  4. type "~/Library/Application Support/Firefox" and choosse "Go"
  5. Select the "profiles" folder from the list and open it
  6. Select the folder with the word "default" in it.
  7. Open the File menu > Get Info
  8. In the "Sharing and Permissions" section, you should see your username listed as having "read and write". If you don't, click the lock icon in the bottom-right corner of the window, enter your password, and then change the permissions to "read and write" from the dropdown.
  9. Open the folder and repeat the process for each subfolder within it.

Does that work?

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thank you, i will check today and report back the results.

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I checked the permissions and the only user on the mac has read-write in that firefox profiles *default* folder.

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OK, could you also check the permissions on the files inside that folder? Specifically, try checking the places.sqlite, places.sqlite-shm, and places-sqlite-wal files. In order to try to figure out the issue, I set my places.sqlite to read-only, and when I do that I get the exact same issue you've described (clicking on the bookmark star doesn't do anything), so I'm guessing that's the issue.

If you have read and write permissions on those files and this is still happening, could you also try this?

  1. open Firefox.
  2. Go to Tools menu > Web Developer > Browser Console.
  3. Click on the bookmarks star a few times.
  4. Take a screenshot of any errors that you see in the console.
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Chosen Solution

This has been resolved. What i did was create a new blank firefox profile, then copy the places.sqllite and other files from the "corrupt" profile, I made that new profile as default and that seemed to correct my inability to save bookmarks while still maintaining my bookmark library and other cached info.

thank you for all your help folks.