A profile makes mozilla firefox killed. How to repair?

Mozilla firefox fills system memory and gets killed during startup if I use my "default" profile, even when started in safe mode. I'm using Kubuntu Linux.

$ firefox -safe-mode
Killed
$

Upgrading did not help (from firefox 3.6.13+build3+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1 to firefox_3.6.16+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1_i386.deb).

I created a new profile and it works, safe mode is not required.

How can I repair the "default" profile? I'd like to have access to the data stored there (bookmarks, history, scrapbook, passwords etc).

Create a new profile and incrementally copy the old data. For every item, close Firefox, copy file(s), start Firefox, and see if it hangs.

• Bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
• Passwords: signons.sqlite, cert8.db, key3.db, secmod.db (all four must be copied together)
• Session: sessionstore.js
• Cookies: cookies.sqlite
• Configuration: prefs.js
• Extensions: extensions.ini, extensions.sqlite and extensions/ directory
• Local storage (incl. some extension data): localstore.rdf
• ...