Chromium browser won't read my profile?

[rxfwilliams]

so i've been using chromium for a couple of months now with no issues. however, with no apparent cause, it give me this:

when i launch it, i get the message "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."

and although my bookmarks, passwords, etc are intact, my most-visited eight sites on the opening page are no longer there, instead replaced by "welcome to chromium" and "chromium themes" sites, which were the default when i first got the program.

i tried reinstalling through aptitude (reinstalled with no change to problem), and i tried and failed to hunt down some sort of profile-type file. i'm certain this is a problem with a straightforward solution, but my linux-fu is still at the yellow belt level...

[Dougie187]

I had the same problem. I fixed it by this.

Open a terminal, type this

mv ~/.config/chromium/Default ~/.config/chromium/Backup

Now run chromium, and it should work. Then close it, and type this in your terminal.

rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default
cp -R ~/.config/chromium/Backup ~/.config/chromium/Default

Then when you open it all of your preferences should be back, and everything should be good.

EDIT:
If you want an easier way and don't care about your bookmarks and preferences or anything, you could close it and type this.

rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default

Then when you open it you should be able to start from scratch.

[lexfati]

I had also been running Chromium with no issues for a while, until about two weeks ago when I discovered that Google does have a .deb package of the Chrome early release (The link is near the bottom of the page; there are x32 and x64 .debs)

Its still considered an unstable package, but I've not experienced any issues at all, and it has in fact become my browser of choice on both my Kubuntu desktop and Debian macbook.

[Dougie187]

I had also been running Chromium with no issues for a while, until about two weeks ago when I discovered that Google does have a .deb package of the Chrome early release (The link is near the bottom of the page; there are x32 and x64 .debs)

Its still considered an unstable package, but I've not experienced any issues at all, and it has in fact become my browser of choice on both my Kubuntu desktop and Debian macbook.

If I remember correctly, this .deb is an older version. If you want to keep up to date you are probably better off using the daily builds from the chromium ppa.
https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

Either way, it does work very well.

[rxfwilliams]

Dougie187- Thanks! Worked like a charm, no problems now.

Incidentally I am also running the dev version of chrome, but I have this unshakable feeling that Chromium is a little faster (and certainly is a bit more up-to-date).

[Dougie187]

I would imagine it is more up-to-date. Especially since they update it every day.

[FAJALOU]

I have created a script to fix this error:

#!/bin/bash
mv -f ~/.config/chromium/Default/* ~/.config/chromium/Backup/
rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default
cp -R ~/.config/chromium/Backup/ ~/.config/chromium/Default/

Put that in a text doc, make it executable, and there we go. Frustrating bug, but meh it works for now.
Maybe it's an extension error?

[Dougle]

I have created a script to fix this error:

#!/bin/bash
mv -f ~/.config/chromium/Default/* ~/.config/chromium/Backup/
rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default
cp -R ~/.config/chromium/Backup/ ~/.config/chromium/Default/

Put that in a text doc, make it executable, and there we go. Frustrating bug, but meh it works for now.
Maybe it's an extension error?

WTF! argh! noooooooo, fool me for copying and pasting.

[~] ➔ mv -f ~/.config/chromium/Default/* ~/.config/chromium/Backup/
mv: target `/home/dougle/.config/chromium/Backup/' is not a directory
[~] ➔ rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/Default
[~] ➔ cp -R ~/.config/chromium/Backup/ ~/.config/chromium/Default/
cp: cannot stat `/home/dougle/.config/chromium/Backup/': No such file or directory

Needs a mkdir -p in there.

[HobbitTR]

I use Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic and Google Chrome 5.0.307.9 beta
After an unexpected shutdown of my laptop I got the "Your profile could not be opened correctly." message.
I had no chrome processes running after I shut Chrome down.
I then found this thread, however, something did not make sense, the mv command should have been cp (mv in Linux changes the name, cp makes a copy)
I tried the cp command and the file "History-journal" gave up an input-output error.
I checked the permissions of the directory where my chrome data is located: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default
All was OK BUT the permissions of the History-journal file were different.
I deleted the History-journal file and no longer got the message: "Your profile could not be opened correctly."
I have had no previous problems with Google Chrome 5.0.307.9 beta.
If I have this problem again I will post an update.

[wesley.jordan]

Thank You Dougie187! I have no clue what happened to break my profile all of a sudden but I was so grateful for your post that saved the day.

One thing that was different was that I was having problems with Google Chrome and not Chromium but the fix you provided worked perfectly when I changed the directories to:
~/.config/google-chrome/Backup
~/.config/google-chrome/Default