JMX, SNMP, Java, etc...

Last Friday I finally upgraded to Firefox 3.0.1 on Solaris x86. After starting it, it quickly appeared that something was wrong: Firefox 3 was apparently unable to retrieve any of the passwords I had saved with my previous Firefox 2 version! Even weirder, the "remember passwords" option from the preferences tab was off and locked in grey, and I wasn't allowed to switch it on...

After pocking around here and there, I reluctantly switched back to my old 2.0.0.x Firefox install but... the passwords where gone from there too!

Fortunately for me, our clever system administrators have configured our user accounts on ZFS partitions, and arranged for snapshots of our home directories to be saved regularly in a .zfs/snapshot/ folder. So I was able to recover my whole .mozilla/firefox settings from a few hours ago. Thank you ZFS!

For those who might be experiencing the same symptoms with Firefox 3 password manager - here is how I eventually solved it:

1. Remove failover.jsc: for some reason, the Firefox 3 binary I have installed reads this file first - while apparently firefox 2.0.0.x ignores it. This file contained lines like this one:

// Passwords: don't remember
lockPref("signon.rememberSignons", false);

which was responsible for the disabled greyed "remember passwords" option (that hint was provided by Eamonn who suggested that failover.jsc could be responsible for the locked bahaviour). I renamed the file to something else, and the "remember passwords" options was no longer disabled. But still, this was not enough to make Firefox 3 find my old passwords.

2. Finally, I noticed that Firefox 2.0.0.x was using a file called "signons2.txt" which contained the whole login information, while Firefox 3 was using another one, called "signons3.txt", which had been initialized only with the "exceptions" (sites for which the logins should not be remembered). Simply copying signons2.txt onto signons3.txt solved the problem.

So I am now able to enjoy all the newest greatest features of Firefox 3 on my Solaris 10 x86 box too! :-)

Cheers,
-- daniel