1401335 - "All Bookmarks" folder appears twice in the Library dialog

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Don Pellegrino]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2017-09-19 16-40-15.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Build ID: 20170803033638

Steps to reproduce:

Press CTRL+SHIFT+O to open the Library dialog.


Actual results:

The "All Bookmarks" -> "Other Bookmarks" branch of the tree is selected and opened in the dialog. Observe that there are two entries for "All Bookmarks" at the top level. The first entry has a book icon with a star in the middle. The second entry has a manila folder icon. For both, the Delete option for their context menu is dimmed out. 


Expected results:

There should only be one "All Bookmarks" item.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Can you reproduce this in safe mode? (https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode)

Do you have any extensions that are related to bookmarks?

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Looks like your places.sqlite database is broken, this is very often caused by add-ons that allow you to do things that normally shouldn't be feasible.
My suggestions would be to try:
1. restore bookmarks from a recent bookmarks backup from the Library
2. if that doesn't help, you could throw away places.sqlite and let Firefox generate a new one. You'll lose history though...

Unfortunately the bug is not actionable for us. We have plans to make that left pane virtual in bug 1310295 and than this kind of problems should basically never happen.

Comment 3

[Don Pellegrino]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #1)
> Can you reproduce this in safe mode?
> (https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode)
> 
> Do you have any extensions that are related to bookmarks?

I am able to reproduce the behavior in safe mode.

I do not have any extensions related to bookmarks.

However, I do run Firefox on Android and I have run it on other devices as well with Firefox Sync in use for bookmarks.

Comment 4

[Don Pellegrino]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [::mak] from comment #2)
> Looks like your places.sqlite database is broken, this is very often caused
> by add-ons that allow you to do things that normally shouldn't be feasible.
> My suggestions would be to try:
> 1. restore bookmarks from a recent bookmarks backup from the Library
> 2. if that doesn't help, you could throw away places.sqlite and let Firefox
> generate a new one. You'll lose history though...
> 
> Unfortunately the bug is not actionable for us. We have plans to make that
> left pane virtual in bug 1310295 and than this kind of problems should
> basically never happen.

Thanks for the suggestion. I removed places.sqlite as per:

$ find . -name "places.sqlite"
./.mozilla/firefox/41mfs7uf.default/places.sqlite
$ rm .mozilla/firefox/41mfs7uf.default/places.sqlite 

I then restarted Firefox and it seems that the file was recreated. This resolved the issue of "All Bookmarks" appearing twice.

However, the hierarchy is now stuck with infinite recursion. There is an "All Bookmarks" -> "Other Bookmarks" ->" Other Bookmarks" -> "Other Bookmarks" loop.

Comment 5

[Don Pellegrino]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2017-09-20 14-38-38.png

Comment 6

[Don Pellegrino]

Deleting the first leaf (2nd level) of "Other Bookmarks" seems to have worked. I performed the deletion, closed Firefox, removed places.sqlite again, and then opened Firefox. After this sequence it seems the list is not cleaned up.

Comment 7

[Don Pellegrino]

Sorry, Comment 6 should have read "the list is now cleaned up." The work-around was successful.

Comment 8

[Lina Butler [:lina]]

(In reply to Don Pellegrino from comment #3)
> However, I do run Firefox on Android and I have run it on other devices as
> well with Firefox Sync in use for bookmarks.

These look like left pane queries: special bookmarks that shouldn't be synced, but unfortunately were. :-( We fixed Desktop not to upload them in bug 1274496, but they can be resurrected from a backup or another device. The long-term fix is bug 1310295. In the meantime, I'm glad you were able to clean them up with the workaround in comment 6.