My Firefox bookmarks and history are gone and I can't use the back button; how do I fix this?

Starting with version 3.0, Firefox uses a database to manage bookmarks, history, etc. and this database can be corrupted, resulting in

• bookmarks being lost
• history being lost
• Back and Forward buttons not working

The problem is addressed on the Mozilla support forums.

This simplest fix is ...

• close all firefox windows
• open a terminal/console window and remove places database
  • cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default
  • \rm places.sqlite*

If this does not recover your bookmarks, then you will want to recover them from backups, which is a little more complicated ...

• close all firefox windows
• open a terminal/console window and remove places database
  • cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default
  • \rm places.sqlite*
• look at the copies of your places database in the backups
  • ssh ms
  • cd /usr/local/msbackups/home/`whoami`
  • ls -lth */.mozilla/firefox/*.default/places.sqlite
• copy the most recent version of the largest places.sqlite file to your firefox profile folder; for example
  • cp -p {2009-12-01,~}/.mozilla/firefox/sbjioi3p.default/places.sqlite