Time To Panic

Today started on a strange note- the alarm went off as usual and I thought that I'd woken up and started getting ready. I perhaps should have known something was amiss when I started building a bonfire on the beach outside my house; I live nowhere near the ocean. Next thing I know my wife's nudging me up and telling me that the school bus has come and the kids are still sleeping. Darn. That fire was really getting going too.

Anyway, I come downstairs, get breakfast, etc and then come in to check the Infernal Machine- there's a Firefox window open and that's when the panic grips me- the personal toolbar is empty. I sit down and click on bookmarks- that's empty too. The page being displayed tells me that Firefox has been successfully updated- but all of my details are missing! It's been a while since I backed up my bookmarks, Quicknote, and so on- and then there's the matter of all those passwords that I can't remember but Firefox has saved for me. It all seems to be gone. Just wiped away. I quickly start looking for the Mozilla folder and my profile. Oddly, the bookmarks file there is nearly 500kb. Perhaps all is not lost.

To change profiles or to point Mozilla at a different one, you need to shut the programme down. I copy and paste the folder holding the bookmarks file- hoping beyond hope that it really is mine- just in case and then shut down Firefox. No sooner has the window vanished than it opens again on its own; only this time it's the Firefox I recognise with its cluttered toolbar and bulging list of bookmarks, many of which are so old that the websites they belong to- let alone the pages they point to- no longer exist.

I suspect that a cat is to blame- dancing around on my keyboard is one of the annoying habits of a stray kitten I've brought in. How it managed the trick though, I have no idea.

Time to start breathing again. The first thing I do is find a back-up utility. MozBackup seems to be the prime example but I'm going to take a chance on FEBE first; simply because it can do an automated backup.

If you know of a better way to back-up Firefox (bookmarks, passwords, etc) then please do let me know.