Firefox - uninstall extension.(Solved)

[viking777]

Here is a rather cryptic question for those of you that like that sort of thing.

How do I uninstall a Firefox extension that ins't installed?

The problem is this. I have been having repeated trouble shutting down Firefox recently. It seems to close but then leaves processes running that gradually eat up more and more processor capacity and cause hotter and hotter temperatures. I can kill the rogue processes with 'killall firefox', but I would rather it shut down properly.

Going to the Firefox help site, it suggests restarting with extensions disabled then shutting down. When I do this I never seem to get a problem. Therefore the problem must be in one of the extensions. When I open Tools>Add On's I see 6 extensions 5 of which are running and one of which is 'Disabled', 'Not compatible with Firefox 9.0.1' So this must be the problem right?

The trouble is there is no way to delete this extension (it is called 'Stylish' btw and I have no idea how it got there because I am damn sure I didn't install it, I have no interest in 'Styling' stuff, as long as it works that is all I care about).

So back into FF help and the 'long hand' method of deleting extension is simply to open the FF profile, go to the Extensions folder and delete the extension manually from there. No problem, except for the fact that it isn't there in the first place, there are only 5 extensions in the extensions folder, the 5 that are working properly.

Normally my next course of action would be to reinstall 'Stylish' and then delete it again - but I can't because it is not compatible with my FF version so it won't install.

So that is it really, how do I uninstall an extension that is not installed but seems to be causing trouble?

[xenopeek]

Three addons that I always remove, as at least the globalmenu is only for Unity and the Stylish addon has never worked, are the following three:

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sudo apt-get --purge autoremove firefox-globalmenu
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove mint-search-addon
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove mint-stylish-addon

I think you can remove none of these from Firefox itself, but you can uninstall the packages. I'm not sure how a disabled addon would be causing your problems though, it sounds like another addon is being buggy

If your problems persist, you can create a new profile for use in your Firefox. To do so, close Firefox, and run:

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firefox -ProfileManager

After you have created a new profile, you can run Firefox with that profile with:

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firefox -noremote -P <profile>

Where you replace <profile> with your profile name. This will start Firefox without any addons that you installed on your default profile. So you could add them one by one and try to find out which one is causing problems.

[Myself]

I kept getting this error on start-up of Firefox 9.0.1 so I changed to Iceweasel 12.something. No problems since.

[viking777]

sudo apt-get --purge autoremove mint-stylish-addon

I am pretty sure that is it Vincent. I had absolutely no idea that had been installed via mint repos (although I did know that I hadn't installed it so I suppose I should have guessed).

Thanks very much for that, I will monitor it and see if it ends my shutdown problem.

Edit. I think I will mark this as solved. The initial question - how do I uninstall an extension that I haven't installed - has been answered very successfully. The shutdown problem will take a while to monitor - it has been OK so far though.

[viking777]

Well it took several days for it to recur, but removing the rogue extension has not cured the FF shut down problem, so my original guess as to the cause was obviously wrong, it happened again last night. I shut down my browser then left the computer for about half an hour, when I looked at it again I had 100% cpu usage, full speed on the cooling fan, and a cpu temperature of 82c, not funny, especially since it had been going on for half an hour . I will have to think/search again.

[xenopeek]

82c That's not good. Isn't there also some protection you can add where the computer will shut itself down above a certain threshold temperature? I can do so from my BIOS, but I'm assuming there would be some Linux program for this also...

What addons or plugins other than Stylish do you have? As shared above, you can create a new profile so as to have a Firefox without your current addons.

[viking777]

82c That's not good. Isn't there also some protection you can add where the computer will shut itself down above a certain threshold temperature? I can do so from my BIOS, but I'm assuming there would be some Linux program for this also...

What addons or plugins other than Stylish do you have? As shared above, you can create a new profile so as to have a Firefox without your current addons.

It is a laptop of course and they nearly always run hotter than desktops although having said that I was not happy at having over 80c for half an hour!. There is a thermal cut out setting built into the laptop which I remember seeing on one occasion (but can't remember how or where I saw it - probably in the bios) but I believe it was set to over 100c (only working from distant memory though so could be wrong). As for a new profile, I don't think that is much different from starting with all the extensions disabled. The problem with this is that it is one of those impossible intermittent faults, it hasn't happened for 2 or 3 three days during which time FF has been shut down normally dozens of times. My other extensions are:

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