Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Chromium Browser Issue under Ubuntu

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Chromium Web Browser
Chromium Web Browser
This evening while I was web surfing, I decided to make a couple of changes to my Ubuntu desktop and thought I'd simply sign out and back in to see if the changes would stay upon a reboot/log off.  My changes worked fine.  However, I didn't exit the Chromium Web Browser properly when logging off.  In short, I logged off while I had the browser minimized to the Unity dock.  I honestly didn't think anything else about it.

Upon signing back in, and launching the Chromium Web browser again I was greeted with an error I hadn't previously seen. (See pic below)



Your profile could not be opened.
Bad Profile??

"Your profile could not be opened correctly.  Some features may be unavailable.  Please check that the profile exists and you have permission to read and write its contents." This is the error message I got, and was unable to proceed past the error.

Upon further inspection, by right clicking the Chromium launcher in the Unity dock, I was able to select 'Open a New Window with a Temporary Profile' to do some research on the issue.  In short, I found a bunch of links with very similar information.  There are two ways to go about fixing this issue.

The first, basically make a backup of the Chromium Configuration File and then launch Chromium to let the profile rebuild itself.  Or just launch Chromium and let it build a new profile configuration anyways (this option will cause you to loose all of your browsing history, bookmarks, cookies, etc.

*Hit enter after each command entered into Terminal.

Step 1: Close Chromium.
Step 2: Launch the Terminal (Alt + Ctrl + T)
Step 3: Type the following:    mv ~/.config/chromium/Default ~/.config/chromium/Backup
Step 4: Launch the Chromium again.  This time is should open without an error.
Step 5: Once you have verified it works, close Chromium again.  We will restore your data.
Step 6: Go back into Terminal and type:  rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default
Step 7: Still in Terminal, type:   cp -R ~/.config/chromium/Backup ~/.config/chromium/Default
Step 8: Exit Terminal and open Chromium and verify your data has returned (bookmarks, etc.)

If you aren't particularly picky, and don't mind loosing things like your bookmarks, cookies, and browsing history.  Then you can simply just launch Terminal and type the following command and hit enter:   rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default

This will remove the existing Chromium configuration file.  By removing the configuration file, Chromium will be force to create a new profile configuration the next time it is run.  Essentially starting with a blank slate as if it were just installed.

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