[RESOLVED] Changes to whitelist won't save

[Kitau]

Read FAQ and Read This First. Unable to resolve issue with latest stable or development build. Running Firefox v 16.0.2 Windows 7 home premium.

Here's what happens. I go to a new website I like, say, Grooveshark. I allow (not temporarily, permanently) grooveshark.com and gs-cdn.net and the site works fine. Yay! The next time I turn on my computer, the place is blocked like I never allowed it. Tried restarting browser without restarting computer, changes to whitelist don't save. Restart computer. No dice. Tried archiving the whitelist, wiping it clean, and restarting. Whitelist no longer wiped clean. All the old websites on the whitelist are there like I never reset it.

So now if I want to ever save changes to my whitelist, I have to archive the changes, restart, wipe whitelist clean, and load the archive. What's especially odd is that it seems I'm the only one having this problem that I could find. My next step will be to uninstall Firefox and reinstall it, but wanted to post here first before I do that, because my intuition tells me that doing so could make things worse. Thanks for reading. Hope it's something simple I overlooked.

[Thrawn]

You might have a corrupted profile, or a conflict with another extension.

Please create a clean profile from scratch. Install only NoScript, leaving all the defaults.
Does the problem still exist? If not, NoScript is not the culprit.

Try adding back your extensions, one at a time, until you find the one that causes the issue.
Then remove all the others, pairing only the suspected one with NoScript, to confirm that the remaining one is the issue.
If the problem is solved even with all add-ons reinstalled, then the previous profile was probably corrupt. Problem solved.

Let us know, thanks.

[Tom T.]

The only other possibility that I could add to Thrawn's excellent advice is whether you have write permissions to the (permanent) Fx profile folder, including specifically prefs.js file.

For example: You are running with less than Admin privilege; you are running the browser inside a sandbox or virtual machine; or using "Steady State" or any other tool that starts the same configuration each time -- all of which are excellent safety measures to prevent malware infections, but do require some additional user action to make permanent changes.

[Kitau]

Please create a clean profile from scratch.

This fixed the problem as far as I can tell. Created a new profile using these instructions: Creating_a_new_Firefox_profile_on_Windows and named it "NoScript Fix" Installed NoScript only, and the whitelist would save changes made. Went back to my old profile "default" and disabled everything except NoScript... the whitelist would not save changes. So I'm guessing a corrupt profile file is exactly what the problem was. I'll let you know if anything else comes up. Thanks for the help!

[RSaunders]

I had a simpler version of this problem. In the folder containing my Firefox profile there is a file called NoScriptSTS.db . Somehow, still unknown to me, the permissions of this file were set to "no delete". When I saved a change NoScript made a NoScriptSTS.db.tmp file, presumably with the change in it. Then it tried to replace the original, failed due to lack of access, and gave no error message . Fixing the permissions of this NoScriptSTS.db file fixed the problem leaving the rest of my profile un-changed.

Usual comments about rummaging around inside your profile: your mileage may vary, if you break something it's not my fault, ...