444594 - Thirdparty backups fail because places.sqlite-stmtjrnl cannot be copied

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

I use SyncBackSE for nightly backups of my home directory. It sometimes fails to backup this file:

C:\Documents and Settings\rhuffman\\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.kx6\places.sqlite-stmtjrnl

It cannot backup this file because it is in use by another process, presumably Firefox.

This backup occurs nightly at 3:00 AM, when there has been no activity on my computer for at least three hours. I can think of no reason an application should have a file open when there has been no activity for that long. Shouldn't Firefox be closing this file?

Note that I could probably get this to work if I enabled shadow volume copy. However, i don't want to do that.





Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Leave Firefox open.
2. Run a third-party backup that does not use shadow volume copy to access files opened by other applications. (Perhaps a plain ol' cp would fail, too.)

Actual Results:  
Backup failed on the places.sqlite-stmtjrnl file.

Expected Results:  
Backup should not fail, particularly if Firefox has not been used for three hours.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

That is just the journaling file (AFAIK) and it's IMHO ok to still leave it open.

Comment 2

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

You really shouldn't be backing up your profile when Firefox is running either.

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

Thanks. As a software developer myself, I, too, have often said to user's "don't do that".

    Patient: "Doctor, it hurt when I lift my arm".
    Doctor: "Don't lift your arm."

However, I think it is quite normal to run a scheduled backup of a home directory, and forcing a user to close Firefox while that backup is running is really not the best behavior. I bet I can backup an Opera or Internet Explorer profile while those browsers are running.

Of course, I can easily exclude this file from my backup: it certainly doesn't seem that important. Still, from a usability standpoint, this is really a bit of a pain.

Comment 4

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Bulk closing all UNCONFIRMED bugs dealing with places that haven't had any bug activity in over 120 days, have no votes, and are not enhancement requests.

If you are still experiencing this issue in Firefox 3.0 or later, please re-open the bug with steps to reproduce (if they were not part of the original comment).

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv