346003 - History of firefox is lost when disk is full, notify user?

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Lee Revell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060608 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060608 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.4

If Firefox is closed or crashes when the disk is full, history will be lost.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch firefox
2. Generate a disk full condition
3. Exit Firefox

Actual Results:  
Next time Firefox is started the history is blank

Expected Results:  
History should not be lost.  It's not possible to save the new history with a full disk, but the previous history should not be lost.

Related to bug #242207

Comment 1

[Geoffrey G Wright]

I just submitted a disk-full-related bug concerning context menus. 

Regarding the history, I think a 'feature' should be added where the oldest entries in the history are removed to accomodate the new ones when the disk is full.

These disk full issues are more important as more people run Firefox from USB devices and (like me) from encrypted volumes.

Comment 2

[Lee Revell]

Well, it would be a huge improvement if it simply didn't unlink the old history file until the new one was safely created.  Better to lose the new entries than lose everything.  It could also give the user a chance to free up some disk space rather than silently discarding the history (currently a transient disk-full condition causes the history can be lost in mid-session, without having to restart FF)

Comment 3

[Marek Baczyñski]

A lot of bad things happen when the disk is full. I had to basically delete my profile since all extensions just disappeared and none were able to install (no matter how many times I restarted the browser, they just kept asking for restart.)

IMHO firefox should refuse to start (or start in some kind of read-only mode) when the device that stores current profile is full.

Comment 4

[Malcolm Smith]

I have also experienced this.

Comment 5

[Jakub Januszkiewicz]

I confirm that.
In addition, all remembered form data is lost (but the stored passwords remain, thankfully) and the toolbars are reset to default. At least that happened to me yesterday when I run out of disk space.
I've also lost the whole Adblock Plus filter list, though I'm not sure if it's a Adblock or Firefox bug.

Comment 6

[Alexander Sack]

looks like a resurrection of bug 86501 

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is this issue still seen in current firefox?

bug was filed when history was in mork so perhaps this can be closed.

xref bug 286988

Comment 9

[Micah Gersten]

We (Ubuntu) just had a confirmation on Linux that this was still happening with Firefox 8. (See linked Launchpad bug)

Comment 10

[Samuel Bronson]

Lots of bad things do happen when the disk is full.  (Session Restore doesn't save the session, visited links don't turn purple, etc.)  It would be *really* helpful if Firefox would alert users about the problem so they can remedy it ASAP, preferably before Firefox crashes/power goes out/etc. and they lose their session.

Comment 11

[Nikhil Johny]

Hi, I don't know i am the right person to take up this bug as i am still new to open source. But i would still like to take it up with help provided.
Thanks

Comment 12

[Lee Revell]

This bug no longer seems to be present in Firefox 38.0 on Ubuntu 14.04. Thanks!