1226921 - My places.sqlite.corrupt says OK to the PRAGMA integrity_check; yet renaming it to places.sqlite doesn't work

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Places, defect)

Description

[steven.bernhardson]

Attachment: places.sqlite.corrupt

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0
Build ID: 20151029151421

Steps to reproduce:

Profile has places.sqlite
I can see all the data in it using dbBrowser for SQ Lite
I start Firefox
It renames this file places.sqlite.corrupt and creates a  blank places.sqlite


Actual results:

Bookmarks library is blank


Expected results:

I should have seen over 3,000 bookmarks.

I attached corrupt version of file with all the data in it

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

file corruption is not the only reason for Places to consider a database corrupt, for example if one runs SQL queries directly on the database and he breaks some data coherence, it may still be unusable by Places.
This may help (or not): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/Places/places.sqlite_Database_Troubleshooting

I'll take a look at your file when possible.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

So, the problem is that this database is just too old. Its user_version is 10, that seems to point out it's a Firefox 3.5/3.6 database. The current version of Firefox can only migrate databases from Firefox 4 on.

That means if you really need to upgrade this db you must install an older version of Firefox (I think anything between 4 and 12 should work) and then install the current version.
Or just import a JSON bookmarks backup from the old profile to the new Firefox profile.

Comment 3

[dann]

facing the same problem but with firefox 50. i had recently updated to 57 and couldnt stomach it. i downgraded to firefo 50 and i lost all of my data in the process. i have the places.splite file intact but it wont load in the new firefox session. i have my tabs and bookmarks coming back each time i delete the places.sqlite file but i cant access the old file with all of my history in it. how do i fix this? the places maintenance extension gets stuck at cleaning up. please help.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Note that downgrading is not always possible, it usually works moving to the previous version or to an ESR, but we had multiple incompatible upgrades between 52 to 57 that make that not possible.
My suggestion is either to move to ESR52 or to the most recent version, because otherwise you are exposed to various malicious security problems. History may not be recoverable on a downgrade. It's likely the original db will work again if you upgrade to Firefox 59.

Comment 5

[dann]

so i should try to use the backup on the version that i downgraded from?

Comment 6

[dann]

thanks, i tried it and it works. just wish it looked and felt a little nicer. i used to use a classic theme on ver 5.

Comment 7

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

there are various customizations you can do, both officially through Preferences and Customize and unofficially through userChrome.css. this is not the right place to discuss those though, I think there is a reddit group dedicated to Firefox modding around.