Frefox Update From Firefox-60.2.0-1.el7.CentOS.x86_64 To 60.2.1-1.el7.CentOS.x86_64 Lost Master Password

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CentOS 12 Comments

Hi list,

Did an update to firefox last night and rebooted over night.

Today I find firefox started without asking for master password – funny me thinks.

Try to log in to a web service I use and find that my password does not appear.

Check preferences and find that no master password is set and the password list / table is empty.

As I do not trust my passwords to the cloud I do not save these to my firefox profile ….. so back to manual entry for all my sites…. wow going to be a slow month as I reset scores of passwords.

Any one else have this problem and any clues as to what causes this? I
am concerned if this should happen again, as I have saved passwords for many scores of web services.

TIA
Rob

12 thoughts on - Frefox Update From Firefox-60.2.0-1.el7.CentOS.x86_64 To 60.2.1-1.el7.CentOS.x86_64 Lost Master Password

  • Hi,

    haven’t had that, but restoring logins.json and key3.db in
    ~/.mozilla/firefox/…/ from your latest backup should do the trick.

  • I had the same problem. Upgraded to the latest firefox last saturday everything looked ok all day. Logged in on monday to find my master password and all my stored passwords were gone. Unfortunately I had done a backup of the home directories later on saturday. So restoring the key3.db and logins.json files didn’t work.

    The problem seems to be with the key3.db file. When the latest firefox
    (re)creates it, it has the wrong permissions

    -rw——-.  1 molloyt molloyt    1137 Oct  3 16:09 logins.json
    -rw——-. 1 molloyt molloyt   16384 Oct  3 14:48 key3.db

    I removed firefox, deleted the .mozilla directory and reinstalled firefox. But the problem remains.

    1. Delete the logins.json and key3.db files
    2. Start firefox key3.db file created with the above permissions and
    selinux context looks ok
    3. Set master password and a few account passwords
    4. Check they’re there in preferences, ok
    logins.json file created with above permissions
    5. login/out a few times to the accounts to make sure everything
    works,ok
    6. Shutdown firefox and restart it, account settings ok and working
    but key3.db file gone
    7. Shutdown firefox and restart it, master password and accounts gone
    check recreated key3.db file and it has permissions as above.

    I’m stumped. Any ideas gratefully accepted ;-)

    Tony.
    —
    Tony Molloy
    Home

  • It would seem that the problem is with upstream-upstream’s (aka Firefox) cleaning up of items that are not supposed to be there after Firefox 58

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id75775

    It looks like it is deleting files it thinks should have been converted to a newer more secure version.. but don’t seem to be for some reason. I am not sure if those files will just removed again every time you restore them.

  • Yes, that seems to describe what I am experiencing. As I usually keep FF
    open for days at a time, it has taken a while to show up. Will now try the

    $ export NSS_DEFAULT_DB_TYPE=”sql”

  • Hi Akemi,

    That sorted the problem for me, thanks. Now to start re-entering all my previously stored passwords. Lucky I
    have a list of sites if not the usernames/passwords ;-(

    Regards Tony
    —
    Tony Molloy
    Home

  • works for me too – will just need to make sure this goes somewhere safe to ensure survival after a reboot.

  • Put it in your .bash_profile. Then it will be set in your environment each time you boot.

    Regards, Tony.

    —
    Tony Molloy
    Home

  •  put this in .bash_profile and reboot – then check from a shell that export shows the declaration. I think this locks firefox into the old key3.db mode of operation. I didn’t have an old file to restore, thus lost all my logins and also my noscript history – what a huge PITA!

    Have just done the yum update for the latest firefox and now I see a key4.db. Needed to start the new firefox and exit before it showed. HOWEVER when I logged out and back in without the export command it all went pear shaped again. So reinstated the export NSS…. again, now I needed to reestablish the master password file, it seems to make a new key3.db file and doesn’t touch the key4.db file that was originally created after the firefox update. BUT THEN when I exit a second time it deletes the key3.db and I’m back to ZERO.

    This is so stuffed up!

    Seems every second time I exit Firefox it kills the key3.db and all my stuff is gone.

    Some seriously brain dead designers in the firefox / mozilla stable at this time. Seems that one cannot afford to exit firefox and keep the master password file/database. After so many years of using it, I cannot live without a reliable password and master password database – firefox clearly doesn’t have this capability any longer.

    Moving to try Vivaldi

  • It will be fixed when this is released:

    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1633932#c23

    In the mean time, for CentOS-6 and CentOS-7 (x86_64, i386) .. there is a temporary unsigned build here:

    https://buildlogs.CentOS.org/c6-firefox60.x86_64/firefox/20181015143830/

    https://buildlogs.CentOS.org/c7-firefox60.x86_64/firefox/20181015143830/

    As soon as Red Hat officially releases the other SRPM, I will build it and release it as well.

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

  • Thanks for these builds!
    Unfortunately I did have problems after updating to them. The session wouldn’t restore as usual and some tabs simply kept empty. The URL was shown correctly but the webpage wasn’t visible. Reloading didn’t help.

    Downgrading to the current version fixed it again.

    Any ideas what could be wrong?

    Regards, Simon

  • No idea .. the buildlog seems OK. This is not released yet upstream is likely in QA testing now.