232236 - Profile Data Backups

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 193567

(Firefox :: General, defect, P4)

Description

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Some data points in user profile that store data:
passwords
bookmarks
history
cookies
formhistory
prefs

Currently the bookmarks file is written to a temp file and then copied to
bookmarks.html only if the write succeeded, we need to make sure the other data
files adopt the same style of writing... but in addition we should keep the last
successfully written file in a backup file, such that if the browser is ever
loaded and the main file is NOT present we load the backup. 

Chofmann experienced a crash in which his bookmarks file vanished. The next time
he loaded the app the default bookmarks appeared. If we had a backup file that
would have been loaded and things would have been peachy.

Comment 1

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

target. 

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

p4 priority - not a blocker. if a fully reviewed patch materializes, please
nominate for aviary approval. 

Comment 3

[Dan Fischbach]

Why don't we just impliment Pike's Bookmark Backup extension?  Despite the name,
it can backup other files to an alternate location, including all those
mentioned above.

Comment 4

[Dan Fischbach]

Attachment: Pike's Bookmark Backup extension v0.3.1

The actual extension to be considered is attached above.  Thanks.

Comment 5

[avocado604-bugz]

I get occasional power-blackouts, and this causes all my history to be lost if
there is a power-out while Firefox is running. This is very irritating to me
because then when I do a Google search I have no way of knowing which links I
have visited before and which I haven't.

As a fix, I would suggest that Firefox make a backup of the history.dat file on
startup. Then if Firefox quits without being shut down properly, the next time
it starts up it would revert to the previous backup of history.dat.

Comment 6

[Stewart Gordon]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 193567 ***