358739 - history.dat file may not be empty even when history is deleted

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Robert Rothenberg]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)

If one manually deletes pages from history, but views a page with links to those pages, the links are (sometimes) still highlighted as visited links.

The assumption is that URLs manually deleted from history somehow still remain there, even though they are not visible.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Clear history
2. Visit a site
3. In history side panel, manually delete all references to that site
4. Exit Firefox and restart
5. Visit a page that links to the site (e.g. Google a term where that site shows up)

Actual Results:  
Often (but not always) the page is highlighted as having been visited, even though the entry for that page has been manually cleared from history.



Expected Results:  
The page should not show up as having been visited

Comment 1

[Robert Rothenberg]

This still occurs sometimes.

I've noticed that the history.dat file still contains some URLs that I've visited, after I've chosen to clear private data!

Comment 2

[Robert Rothenberg]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Exit browser
2. Delete the history.dat file form the profile
3. Restart browser
4. Visit site (e.g. www.yahoo.com)
5. Clear private data
6. Exit Browser

Examine history.dat and there may still be a record for www.yahoo.com.

When browser is restarted, nothing shows up when viewing history.

Comment 3

[Robert Rothenberg]

Firefox seems to consistently preserve the last URL visited in the history.dat file when the browser is configured to erase history on exit.

Sometimes more than one URL is preserved, but I've had difficulty in determining the exact steps to reproduce that case.

Comment 4

[[:Aleksej]]

WFM with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7pre) Gecko/20070821 BonEcho/2.0.0.7pre

Can you reproduce it with Firefox 2.0.0.6 release, or any later build (better from Mozilla)?

If not, please resolve this bug as WORKSFORME. Thanks!

Comment 5

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #4)
> WFM with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7pre) Gecko/20070821
> BonEcho/2.0.0.7pre
> 
> Can you reproduce it with Firefox 2.0.0.6 release, or any later build (better
> from Mozilla)?

Yes, I can reproduce it.

Simple test case:
1. Visit a site (in my case, cnn.com, which isn't in my recent history)
2. View history (Ctrl-h)
3. Select and erase that entry
4. Exit all instances of Firefox
5. Examine history file: it's still there!

You should try this again. I've found that this bug does not reproduce every time.

FYI, I've also noticed that some pages I visit are not in the history, and are even lost with the back button. I'm not sure if it's related to redirect headers or not, but I also suspect it might be related to this bug.

I'm using "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)"

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

see this with version 3?

Comment 7

[Robert Rothenberg]

Version 3 is causes too many problems on my the computers I've used it with, that I cannot run it.  So I cannot verify that if this problem occurs or not.

I believe that version 3 doesn't save the history in a history.dat file, however, I don't know if there's a similar problem in how it handles history.

Comment 8

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

not going to take further fixes on 2.x, feel free to reopen if you can reproduce on 3.x or current trunk