310208 - locked cookie file creates unlimited persistent file copies

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 257288

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

Having cookies.txt locked causes Firefox to create cookies-1.txt, cookies-2.txt,
ad infinitum, and never delete them, although the Options setting is "Keep
cookies until I close Firefox".

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Lock cookies.txt (read-only).
2.  Surf normally, with Options set to "Keep cookies until I close Firefox".
3.  Exit Firefox.
4.  View the Profile directory.
Actual Results:  
cookies.txt, cookies-1.txt, cookies-2.txt, ... , cookies-38.txt

Expected Results:  
cookies.txt (all other generated cookie files should have been deleted)

I lock the cookie file because I have four cookies I need to keep permanently
while all others I need to be deleted at the end of a session, and
Firefox/Mozilla provides no way to do this.  I run a script which deletes the
leftover cookie files at the end of a session because undesired persistent
cookies are a security risk.  Ideally though, the cookie manager should allow
the user to mark selected cookies for permanent retention.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Firefox can't write to cookies.txt when it is read-only.
The cookies you want to keep can be put in the whitelist (Tools > Options >
Privacy > Cookies > Exceptions).
The permission will be written to hostperm.1.
The cookies will be written to cookies.txt.

Comment 2

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

> Firefox can't write to cookies.txt when it is read-only.

I assume that is why Firefox creates cookies-1.txt, which is logical.  But
cookies-1.txt is writeable, so creating dozens of enumerated cookie files after
cookies-1 in the same session is not.  It is as if a filename parameter is never
getting updated from cookies to cookies-1, dooming it to a constant cycle of
creating and ignoring cookies-<n+1>.  If it continued to use cookies-1, it would
be able to "Keep Cookies: until I close Firefox" by simply clearing the contents
of cookies-1.  But instead it leaves dozens of cookie-laden files, and adds
dozens more with each session.  Mozilla did not seem to have a problem with a
locked cookie file.

> The cookies you want to keep can be put in the whitelist

The whitelist form appears to only allow entry of website addresses, but I do
not want to retain all the cookies for a site.  Also, with "Allow sites to set
cookies / For the originating web site only / Keep Cookies: until I close
Firefox", it does not seem like "Exceptions" would work because it does not have
options for "Keep" and "Discard", only for "Allow" and "Block".

Comment 3

[zug_treno]

Related to bug 297313 and/or Core bug 257288?

Comment 4

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

> Related to bug 297313 and/or Core bug 257288?

Apparently so, thanks!  I hadn't noticed before, but cookies.txt is NOT locked;
Firefox renamed the locked cookies.txt file I originally installed to
cookies.txt.moztmp (still locked), and then began its infinite cookies<n+1> loop
behavior starting with cookies.txt (apparently equivalent to cookies-0.txt).  So
the problem is as described except decremented by one and triggered by a locked
cookies.txt.moztmp.  Mozilla used to leave the locked cookies.txt file alone.

I'll move to 257288.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 257288 ***