1533480 - Wrong favicons on some of my bookmarks

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P3)

Description

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0 ID:20190307094951

I noticed it today and I think it is a very recent regression (1 or 2 days), I have bookmarks in my personal bookmarks toolbar in a folder and some of them had an incorrect favicon, specifically two of them (an etherpad and a google doc) have a twitter icon today.

If I click on them and reopen the folder while the link is loading in the background, I see that the twitter favicon is replaced by the default nightly icon and then comes back as a twitter icon. The icon displayed on the tab is the right one.

The browser console has this error message when I click on links in my bookmarks in case it matters:

Unchecked lastError value: Error: Could not establish connection. Receiving end does not exist. background.js:1
sendRequestToSpecificTab moz-extension://07cd0637-83ff-4ebd-9b5f-18ca70b6fbdc/js/background.js:1

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

As I said on Slack, we recently fixed similar problems, so I was not expecting to see it coming back.
This far is unclear which recent change may have regressed it.

Anyway, those failures are from add-ons, could you please provide a list of your add-ons? those may help reproducing the bug.

Comment 2

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Here is the list of my active extensions from about:support:

Amazon Assistant for Firefox	10.1805.2.1019	true	[e-mail]
Anchors Reveal	1.1	true	jid1-XX0TcCGBa7GVGw@jetpack
Awesome RSS	1.3.5	true	{97d566da-42c5-4ef4-a03b-5a2e5f7cbcb2}
Better TweetDeck	3.8.2	true	[e-mail]
Bugzilla Helper	0.7.1	true	[e-mail]
BugzillaJS	4.2.1	true	jid0-NgMDcEu2B88AbzZ6ulHodW9sJzA@jetpack
BugzillaJS: Open all in Tabs	0.3	true	{8d180b96-acbe-486d-a9e2-3d998aaec44f}
ColorZilla	3.3	true	{6AC85730-7D0F-4de0-B3FA-21142DD85326}
Facebook Container	1.4.2	true	@contain-facebook
Firefox Multi-Account Containers	6.1.0	true	@testpilot-containers
French Holiday Form Generator	1.5.2	true	jid1-Ie0ShncwSkPKJg@jetpack
Gecko Code Coverage	0.10.1	true	{69338e4f-0210-483e-bb27-16032f0858f0}
Google Search "View Image" Button	1.5	true	{23cc126f-bd98-4a53-807a-cbc9af2cfe89}
Intégration à GNOME Shell	10.1	true	[e-mail]
Media Panel	2.5	true	{68d048f4-9449-4c97-8425-6dac7f743b14}
Nightly Tester Tools	4.0	true	{8620c15f-30dc-4dba-a131-7c5d20cf4a29}
Pushlog	0.0.5	true	pushlog@calixteman
Search by Image	1.19.0	true	{2e5ff8c8-32fe-46d0-9fc8-6b8986621f3c}
Stylus	1.5.2	true	{7a7a4a92-a2a0-41d1-9fd7-1e92480d612d}
Switch Container	0.8	true	{c580e2d6-885a-4cb9-af49-59b3b48350e9}
Tab Counter Plus	2.9.1	true	tab-counter-plus@Loirooriol
Take a Break	0.1.0	true	{7ce5a677-8484-453f-8f4e-9b1942faa07e}
trelloimprovements	1.2.4	true	jid1-dsX36ZazXgylyQ@jetpack
TweetPane	1.2.4	true	[e-mail]
Wayback Machine	1.8.6	true	[e-mail]
Web Developer	2.0.1	true	{c45c406e-ab73-11d8-be73-000a95be3b12}

Comment 3

[Liviu Seplecan]

Hi @Pascal Chevrel, I've tested this issue on both machines: Windows 10 & Ubuntu 16.04 - by installing all listed extensions then trying different types of actions - but without success - cannot reproduce it. In my end, all bookmarked files/websites have a properly favicon icon.
It would help us if you can provide more details in order to reproduce the issue and try to get mozregression.
Thanks.

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Pascal, do you do anything like clearing history on shutdown, or not saving history?

Comment 5

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #4)

Pascal, do you do anything like clearing history on shutdown, or not saving history?

Nope

Comment 6

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

FWIW this just happened to me in the last 2-3 days. A mail.google.com bookmark on my toolbar started showing a Twitter favicon.

Comment 7

[Katelyn Gadd (:kael)]

Attachment: image.png

Favicons on the new tab page become incrementally wrong over time and stick that way. Browser restarts don't fix it, I don't do any weird shutdown processes or clear cache.
Reddit, hachimitsu, and waypoint there are wrong. Previously only reddit was wrong (maybe 2 days ago?)

Comment 8

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Could you please try to remove favicons.sqlite and regenerate icons by visiting your bookmarks again? I'd like to understand if the problem happens also with a clean db or it's due to remnants of old bugs.

Comment 10

[Katelyn Gadd (:kael)]

Attachment: image2.png

This also appears to apply to the awesomebar and history sidebar and has continued getting worse.

Didn't see your comment, will test deleting the .sqlite file.

Comment 11

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

Is some cases removing the url from history and then loading the url again has helped, but not always.

the icon seems to be always right in the tabs, so I wonder why that doesn't get updated everywhere.

Comment 12

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

the tabs and the rest of the ui don't use the same source, the tab is the live favicon from the page, while the rest of the ui loads from the favicons db.

Comment 13

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [::mak] (Away 22 -28 Apr) from comment #8)

Could you please try to remove favicons.sqlite and regenerate icons by visiting your bookmarks again? I'd like to understand if the problem happens also with a clean db or it's due to remnants of old bugs.

I tried removing favicons.sqlite today to trigger regeneration, and so far my favicons have all been correct in my awesome bar searches. So, something was corrupt in the old DB, I guess?

I still have the "bad" DB if you'd like to have it for analysis.

Comment 14

[wroot]

I have problems with favicons in bookmarks often and for a few years now. It is ok with most sites, but some might still have an old favicon in some places and then Firefox catches that old favicon and replaces new one with the old in bookmark and there is no way to get rid of it. This is very annoying to see the correct favicon in the tab, but wrong in the bookmark. Sometimes i delete my favicons.sqlite file. But sometimes after that such problematic bookmarks just don't show any bookmark at all. Also with Quantum introduction i now don't get bookmarks for sites that are on my localhost (web admin of a program). All these scenarios work perfectly fine in Chrome, never had such problems.

So, i have a JIRA instance i work with. It have the latest version of JIRA with a blue rhombus icon. Yesterday i have pressed on one image on that page and View image, it loaded that image, but for some reason it showed JIRA's old icon there (a little human). Same icon is also used in mobile version of JIRA for some reason (i have filed a ticket for them, but no fix yet). And then my JIRA bookmark changed to that old icon and that's it. I can reload the tab, delete and bookmark again, still the same old icon. After deleting sqlite file it now shows default favicon (globe) no matter how many times i press on it or reload the tab. I have tried similar steps in Chrome and it never reverted to that old icon. It opens an image and shows old icon in the tab, but my bookmark is not affected by this.

Comment 15

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] from comment #13)

I still have the "bad" DB if you'd like to have it for analysis.

Please, if you can send it to me through private mail and Firefox Send, I'll have a look. I think it's hard to debug this from the final result, but maybe it will contain some hint to investigate.

Comment 16

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to wroot from comment #14)

I have problems with favicons in bookmarks often and for a few years now. It is ok with most sites, but some might still have an old favicon in some places and then Firefox catches that old favicon and replaces new one with the old in bookmark and there is no way to get rid of it.

What do you mean by old favicon, a favicon that has been replaced in the meanwhile, or the wrong favicon? This bug report is only about wrong favicons, like an Amazon bookmark gets the favicon of Google.

Sometimes i delete my favicons.sqlite file. But sometimes after that such problematic bookmarks just don't show any bookmark at all.

I think you meant bookmarks don't show a favicon? That may be expected, we don't fetch icons in background, you must revisit the bookmark to fetch an icon. If an icon is still not shown, I'd be interested in getting some example urls where it happens.

Also with Quantum introduction i now don't get bookmarks for sites that are on my localhost

Not sure what this means, sorry, I need more details.

So, i have a JIRA instance i work with. It have the latest version of JIRA with a blue rhombus icon. Yesterday i have pressed on one image on that page and View image, it loaded that image, but for some reason it showed JIRA's old icon there (a little human).

I think it just used the root favicon, if it's a local install maybe it still exists. you should be able to just clear history for that specific domain (Forget about this site) and any old favicons should be expired. This provided they don't wrongly use that icon and didn't update it, as you said it's also used on mobile thus maybe it's a problem on their side.

After deleting sqlite file it now shows default favicon (globe) no matter how many times i press on it or reload the tab.

I suspect that specific page doesn't have a favicon, but there is a root favicon at domain/favicon.ico, and once that is loaded, it is also used by the bookmark.
Without example urls to investigate though, I can't do much.

Comment 17

[wroot]

Yes, my issue is different, but i thought it might be related (not the actual icon is shown in both cases) and it was the only closest to my issue bug i have found. Should i file another one?

By old favicon i mean favicon that might still be in use in some parts of the site, but not the one what is shown in the tab while you browse that site normally.

Current example. I have bookmark for https://issues.igniterealtime.org/. When i open it it shows a blue rhombus icon in the tab. It was also showing it in my bookmark until i tried to right click on the image in the left upper corner (next to Dashboard menu, with orange bubbles) and pressed View image. It opened https://issues.igniterealtime.org/s/-qlz912/800009/01f26914c6948b1d22786e41f5c0076d/_/jira-logo-scaled.png with an older favicon in the tab. And at that point my bookmark switched to that icon and it got stuck with it. I have tried to delete favicons.sqlite, but now that bookmark stays with a default globe icon no matter what address i try to open. I can share my favicons.sqlite if you need it. Actually, have tried to delete my bookmark again and create it and now it used the older icon for it. Have tried Forget this site a few times and now it still shows the older icon. Is this the case of an old icon still being a root icon?

Regarding localhost. I have software installed on my PC, which has a web admin. Which is accessed by http(https)://localhost:1234 (some port number) or http(https)://mypcname:1234. It has a favicon. Before Firefox Quantum it was showing that icon in the bookmark. After i have updated to Quantum that icon vanished from the bookmark and i wasn't able to make it show again.

Comment 18

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Yes, stale icons is a totally different problem from this one, and may not even be a bug (it really depends on a case by case basis).

(In reply to wroot from comment #17)

By old favicon i mean favicon that might still be in use in some parts of the site, but not the one what is shown in the tab while you browse that site normally.

As I said multiple times, there is no strict relation between what the tab shows and what other UI parts show, because source of trust differs. This is for various reasons, and mostly we try to provide the icon that better adapts to the user's resolution (DPI) and the icon scale. Websites unfortunately sometimes provide ugly icons or don't update all of them.

Current example. I have bookmark for https://issues.igniterealtime.org/. When i open it it shows a blue rhombus icon in the tab. It was also showing it in my bookmark until i tried to right click on the image in the left upper corner (next to Dashboard menu, with orange bubbles) and pressed View image. It opened https://issues.igniterealtime.org/s/-qlz912/800009/01f26914c6948b1d22786e41f5c0076d/_/jira-logo-scaled.png with an older favicon in the tab. And at that point my bookmark switched to that icon and it got stuck with it.

That's their problem, see https://issues.igniterealtime.org/favicon.ico, if this icon is wrong they should update it. Likely your bookmarks use this icon instead of the one defined in the page because it better adapts to the resolution of the icon requested. Bug 1494016 may help here, but really websites should start caring about their icons and provide multiple resolutions or an svg.

Regarding localhost. I have software installed on my PC, which has a web admin. Which is accessed by http(https)://localhost:1234 (some port number) or http(https)://mypcname:1234. It has a favicon. Before Firefox Quantum it was showing that icon in the bookmark. After i have updated to Quantum that icon vanished from the bookmark and i wasn't able to make it show again.

Maybe it doesn't have a favicon at all, you should check its source.

Anyway, all of this is unrelated to this bug, so it should be in a different report.

Comment 19

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [::mak] (Away 22 -28 Apr) from comment #15)

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] from comment #13)

I still have the "bad" DB if you'd like to have it for analysis.

Please, if you can send it to me through private mail and Firefox Send, I'll have a look. I think it's hard to debug this from the final result, but maybe it will contain some hint to investigate.

Mail sent.

Comment 20

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]:
This is happening often and is rather bad for ux.

Comment 21

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

We still don't have good enough STR for this, but using the database that jryans sent me some time ago, I found another possible problem in bug 1556474.
If you can share some of the non-privacy-problematic urls with a wrong (not outdated, just icons from a different page) favicon, I may check my theory.

Comment 22

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Given that we are in the investigation phase and are now 2 weeks in the 67 release cycle, marking as fix-optional for 67 in case a safe patch materializes in the next 2 weeks.

Comment 23

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Given the complexity of the issue and the lack of consistent steps to reproduce, this bug cannot be regressed.
If an STR is discovered, please remove the [qa-regression-triage] QA Whiteboard tag.

Comment 24

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Bug 1556474 should solve the problem for pages defining a favicon, the next time they'll be loaded.

Pages that don't define a favicon that in the past were wrongly associated are likely to persist, though a workaround already exists, that is to clear history for those pages.
The only way I can think of to fix those entries would be a one-off full expiration of old icons, but that would also affect good ones and would end up being a dataloss for most users.

Comment 25

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Please test the next nightly, try to reload bookmarks with a wrong favicon and let me know if things improve.
If some icons stay broken, try to clear history for that url, and let me know if they are still broken, in such a case I'd like to get, even privately, a list of those urls.

Comment 27

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I'm de-prioritizing this, because for now we don't have further data or evidence to proceed with investigation. We fixed all that we could find with the data at hand. Please let me know if things are still particularly bad.

Comment 31

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Ok, all the known issues have been fixed, long term the situation shoud go towards a WFM.
Unfortunately there may still be cases we can't handle, because old bugs put invalid entries in the db, and we can't distinguish those from valid ones, for those cases the only solution is to close Firefox and remove favicons.sqlite. But hopefully that won't be necessary with chunked expiration from Bug 1592976.

I'm going to resolve this bug along with the last known dependency, if you should still see problems please file a new bug, so we can start fresh, all the info reported in this bug were already used and handled.

Comment 32

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

FWIW deleting the favicons from the queries at bug 1592976 comment 1 did fix the issue for me (so far).