"Unintentional" uninstall of NoScript?

General discussion about the NoScript extension for Firefox
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periboob
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Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:10 pm

"Unintentional" uninstall of NoScript?

Post by periboob »

Nothing short of a massive stroke could have caused me to intentionally uninstall NS. It is my first line of defense. Yet yesterday, I noticed a couple or unusual pop-ups, I seem to recall it was the first visit to the site. Not an edgy site, I think it was a news-media outlet and I just thought they had found some new way to irritate me. Didnt think much about it, life goes on. Today, I got the same sort of flash-in-a-popup, triggered by a mouse-over. Getting concerned, I looked for a cause, and found my "S" icon missing from the status bar, and NoScript missing from my Extensions List, not disabled, just gone!

OK, I am getting a little old, but I hate to think I could do something like uninstalling an extension that I love, and not remember it!!!
Can anyone think of any possible explanation? Has it maybe happened to anyone else? (running FF 3.0.11, Win Vista)

--edit: the upgrade to FF 3.0.12 was done today, after discovery
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GµårÐïåñ
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Re: "Unintentional" uninstall of NoScript?

Post by GµårÐïåñ »

Did you recently install or update your extensions? It is possible that somehow it corrupted your extension list or damaged the NoScript package.

Try this and let me know how it goes:
1. Close Firefox
2. Click Start -> Run -> type %appdata% and then press enter
3. Open the Mozilla -> Firefox -> profiles -> <###>.default
4. delete
extensions.cache
extensions.ini
extensions.rdf
5. Restart your Firefox

does it come back? If so then it was just a corruption and you are fine. If not then I recommend you reinstall and it could be that your profile is corrupted so you might think about starting fresh but don't forget to backup your places.sqlite as it contains your bookmarks and of course you will need to reinstall your extensions, configure them, etc etc.

In the future I recommend you use FEBE and CLEO to keep a backup copy of your profile regularly and package of your extensions for quick and efficient reinstalls when you need it. You can check my "Productivity Pack" to get the links or search AMO for them.
~.:[ Lï£ê ï§ å Lêmðñ åñÐ Ì Wåñ† M¥ Mðñê¥ ßå¢k ]:.~
________________ .: [ Major Mike's ] :. ________________
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periboob
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Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:10 pm

Re: "Unintentional" uninstall of NoScript?

Post by periboob »

Thanks for the comeback GµårÐïåñ. It is likely something I did, but it is a little scary that a major security feature could get disabled without notice.

As to your ideas, I am not quite ready to delete my main profile yet. I have already reinstalled NS, that was just a reflex action.

I usually add a new extension, just for testing every few months, as interesting stuff shows on my radar. I tried FEBE quite a while back, but it never seemed to work as I hoped, so I have usually just copied the entire profile for backup and portability.

But recently I have been testing running Linux in a VirtualBox. High on my priority list is to have similar configuration of FF on all "computers". 1-Vista, 2-XP, 3-Ubuntu(VB), and 4-Linux-Mint(VB). 1 is my primary, and rarely the subject of an experiment. I have had fair results copying the profile from 1 to 2, and have tried copying profiles to 3 and 4 to with mixed results. I would not have been surprised to find missing extensions on the test machines, but I am pretty careful to not copy anything from the test machines back to the primary. So it is disturbing when the primary, which only modified with standard manual procedures gets bent. (Sorry, running off topic a bit--must be the wine.)
====
After more checking, I have more data, leading to another question. My default profile "extensions" folder contains old noscript versions 1.8.3.2, 1.8.3.3, 1.8.5, 1.9.5, + 1.9.6.9 also there are several other extensions with multiple versions present. Shouldnt extensions cleanup the older versions? Maybe it is time for a rebuild of the profile.
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therube
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Re: "Unintentional" uninstall of NoScript?

Post by therube »

My default profile "extensions" folder contains old noscript versions 1.8.3.2, 1.8.3.3, 1.8.5, 1.9.5, + 1.9.6.9 also there are several other extensions with multiple versions present.
Appears there should only be one, the last installed.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball NoScript FlashGot AdblockPlus
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.22) Gecko/20090605 SeaMonkey/1.1.17
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