Lost all my history and passwords and usernames after upgrade

[sofasurfer]

I upgraded my 20.04 to 22.04 and then to 24.04. Everything seems to have gone well except that I do not have history and all my website usernames and passwords are gone. I do have bookmarks so at least thats a good thing. I did do a /home backup with "back-in-time". I tried to restore the firefox folder and the small window showed the progress and the permissions were restored. But when I closed the small window the main window never showed more than 23 percent completed.
When shall I do?

 

[Condobloke]

Was the history contained in a browser....eg Firefox ?

Passwords...in a password manager ?....or in the same browser?

Usernames, I have zero clue with that area

 

[sofasurfer]

From what I found in google the history is stored in firefox folder. Same with passwords.

 

[Condobloke]

If you have a firefox/mozilla account.....it will be stored there. (you will have a username and password for that)
if you can't remember the password, you can always say you forgot your password and they will email you a new one....probably including something to prove who you are .....

I would assume at this stage that firefox is a new/fresh install in 24.04....so the likelihood of the passwords etc etc being kept in the firefox folder, probably are not good.

 

[Condobloke]

That backup you have with back in time....it is a possibility that you could restore to that backup....and then copy all your passwords and user names ....maybe ?.....would that work for you ?

 

[sofasurfer]

I see that when I attempt to restore a file (originally from 20.04) to 24.04 I am getting this message

rsync --recursive --times --devices --specials --hard-links --human-readable -s --links --perms --executability --group --owner --info=progress2 --no-inc-recursive -R -v --backup --suffix=.backup.20241124 /mnt/0bb8860f-be54-4d20-9d77-b2e7f69c1cbb/backintime/daryl-Inspiron-660/daryl/1/20241122-105650-600/backup/./home/daryl/.local/bin/yt-dlp /

building file list ... done

rsync: [generator] chgrp "/home" failed: Operation not permitted (1)

home/

sent 170 bytes  received 19 bytes  378.00 bytes/sec

total size is 205  speedup is 1.08

rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1338) [sender=3.2.7]


Restore permissions:

Restore permissions: Done

I assume this is a permission issue.

 

[Fanboi]

From what I found in google the history is stored in firefox folder. Same with passwords.

It should be a directory in $HOME/.mozilla/ (I mean your previous home dir) I'd copy it to your new install, run Firefox and export everything to EXML/JSON, then remove the directory, start FF fresh and just import the XML/JSON file(s)... Unless you want to completely restore everything as-was, which is what I do; straight copy. I don't use FF's built-in password/login manager, so I have no idea about that but at least your history and bookmarks will be restored.

PS: you can just copy it over as root, then chown -R <yourUser>:<yourUserGroup> .mozilla/

 

[Fanboi]

I see that when I attempt to restore a file (originally from 20.04) to 24.04 I am getting this message

rsync --recursive --times --devices --specials --hard-links --human-readable -s --links --perms --executability --group --owner --info=progress2 --no-inc-recursive -R -v --backup --suffix=.backup.20241124 /mnt/0bb8860f-be54-4d20-9d77-b2e7f69c1cbb/backintime/daryl-Inspiron-660/daryl/1/20241122-105650-600/backup/./home/daryl/.local/bin/yt-dlp /

building file list ... done

rsync: [generator] chgrp "/home" failed: Operation not permitted (1)

home/

sent 170 bytes  received 19 bytes  378.00 bytes/sec

total size is 205  speedup is 1.08

rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1338) [sender=3.2.7]


Restore permissions:

Restore permissions: Done

I assume this is a permission issue.

As root, chown -R (as my above post) everything to your new user. Having mounted that on mnt/, I assume you sudo mounted it. /mnt is owned by root.

PS: you won't have your original group and owner IDs so you may as well leave the applicable out. Some files (special files, etc.) may not copy and retain all attributes anyway.

 

[KGIII]

Hmm... It could be that the Firefox you're using is now a Snap and thus importing data may take some additional steps. I've not had to do so, so I don't know the process. But, if that's the case, there are the search terms you'll need. I'm sure someone has done it by now.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Along with regular OS backups for my Puppies, I also keep regular backups of all my browser profiles, too (I re-package a great deal of software into 'portable' format for the Puppy community, and thus I run somewhere in the region of a dozen or more 'portable' browsers from an auto-mounted partition on my big secondary 'DATA' drive.)

Never hurts to backup as much stuff as you can. Even if you DO 'sync' with your browser's cloud servers, I'd still rather be "safe" than I'd want to be "sorry"!


Mike.