445565 - firefox not functional when places.sqlite* is corrupted

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Matěj Cepl]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061712 Fedora/3.0-1.fc9 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: firefox-3.0-1.fc9.i386

(originally filed as https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=455633)

When my system was powered off (something fell on the power bar switch), firefox
left an inconsistent places.sqlite* in place.

After reboot and restarting firefox, the following things were broken:
- no working back button, reload button or stop button
- urls were not displayed in the url bar (except the last url typed)
- no working "back" functionality in the browser
- every tab was shown as "loading" (spinning loader thingy), the favicon was
never shown

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. start up firefox with a broken places.sqlite* (in my case,
places.sqlite-journal was 0 size)
Actual Results:  
suffer all kinds of bugs and missing functionality

Expected Results:  
The browser should detect that places.sqlite* is inconsistent.  Maybe it could
reinitialize the places.sqlite*, since removing those files restored firefox to
its former glory - everything now works again.

bug 249150, bug 431558, bug 406833, and bug 404171 are all possible candidates for being duplicates of this bug (or the bugs against which this bug is closed as an duplicate), but neither of these seems to cover the breadth of disasters happening here.

Comment 1

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Do you still have the database file?  Would you be willing to send it to a developer so we can investigate what is going on with it?

Comment 2

[Rik van Riel]

Attachment: places.sqlite that breaks firefox

With the attached places.sqlite (places.sqlite-journal is empty), firefox:

1) cannot restore the previous session
2) does not show the URL visited in the URL entry bar (if you change tabs)
3) does not have working bookmark functionality
4) does not have working history, or a back button

Comment 3

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I'm not able to reproduce any of those symptoms on Mac with the attached sqlite file. Can you attempt it while in Firefox Safe Mode?

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

Comment 4

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

We already have code that does detect and handle a database that's corrupt such that SQLite itself can detect the corruption (we back up the corrupt file, create a new one, and import your newest bookmark backup).

In this case, the database file seems to work fine, so marking this WFM. Please re-open if you have a file that can reproduce this problem.

Comment 5

[nucloxylon]

is there a difference between places.sqlit and places.sqlite? I seem to have both in my profile folder, with places.sqlit being zero bytes. When I delete this file, FF restores its functionality, but for only one session. If I close and open again it again it goes back to the limited functionality mode.

Comment 6

[nucloxylon]

Attachment: sqlit file that breaks firefox

this file is supposed to be empty but bugzilla wouldn't let me attach an empty file. i just typed a '1' in it to make in non-zero. you can delete that if you like.

Comment 7

[nucloxylon]

Attachment: sqilte file that breaks firefox

Comment 8

[nucloxylon]

Attachment: sqilte-journal file that breaks firefox

add the three to your profiles folder- sqilt, sqilte, journal

Comment 9

[nucloxylon]

Add the attached above three files to your profile folder. when i delete them, firefox regenerates them and works for one session. after closing, it does not work again. i have to delete them again to get back functionality.
same thing happens in safemode.

Comment 10

[Bill McGonigle (not currently reading bugmail; please contact directly)]

nucloxylon, is this still a problem for you?  I see the bug wasn't re-opened after you attached your files.

Comment 11

[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