1224860 - want to delete cookies by hand from a directory

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, enhancement)

Description

[Nick Levinson]

Some but perhaps not all cookies have been moved to a new file location in FF 41.0, 41.0.2, and 42.0 on OpenSuse 13.2.

Before version 42.0, I logged into a website, logged out, and got a message that the cookie remembering my login was now gone. Between the login and the logout, therefore, there was a cookie, but it wasn't in FF's list of cookies and I didn't see it in cookies.sqlite when I renamed a copy of that as *.odt and opened the copy in LibreOffice Writer, which showed about half a meg of hash marks.

In version 42.0, I booted up, started FF, did not visit any websites to my knowledge, opened Edit > Preferences > Privacy, and checked what cookies I had. I expected none but got a long list. I checked one cookie and found it was persistent. I changed the setting to Never Remember History. I deleted all of the cookies. Then I went to the Files app, found <cookies.sqlite>, checked the file's Properties, and found the file had not been modified since long before the reboot. Therefore, deleting cookies did not modify <cookies.sqlite>. A search across the whole file system for any files that had been modified at around the time of cookies deletion or after yielded only two folders and no files. Therefore, the cookies were not deleted despite what FF said but are being kept from my view. Then I closed and reopened FF. My setting to Never Remember History had reverted to Use Custom Settings For History. The cookies list then showed as empty. I changed the setting to Remember History, FF restarted by requirement, and FF reverted to Use Custom Settings For History. The cookies list then again showed as empty, but it used to be empty when cookies were really residing somewhere. So I don't believe it is empty.

Before 42.0, perhaps, alternatively, cookies were being written into that file but that file was not being saved during a Firefox session. I don't know how to examine or save an unsaved file in the background. I don't know how stable it is to keep files unsaved; I guess that's not a problem, but I'm not sure. But it would mean that cookies were being kept during a session though unsaved and that websites could see them but that users couldn't, and that would have been contrary to what Edit > Preferences > Privacy promised in its settings. And 42.0 has been keeping old cookies when it shouldn't have been.

Now, I'd like to be sure that cookies are not being kept, an issue even when Never Remember History is selected; and, at the same time, I'd like to know if cookies.sqlite is needed by FF even if there are no cookies (when there are no cookies the file is still very large, about half a meg, which implies a need other than for cookies themselves). Something should say. Help doesn't and the settings aren't doing what they promise. Where are the cookies?

Related is bug 1213630.