Closed Bug 461140 Opened 16 years ago Closed 16 years ago

Added bookmarks are not saved

Categories

(Toolkit :: Places, defect)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Places
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
critical

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: vaclavpe, Unassigned)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

After I add some bookmarks in Firefox 3.03 and close it or Firefox crashes, added bookmarks are gone. The same applies when I move some bookmarks in the Manager. They appear back on old place. It looks bookmarks are not stored automatically.

It is critical bug as I lost data (bookmarks, of course).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Add some bookmark
2. Close FF ( or make it crash )
3. Start FF and look in the bookmarks
Actual Results:  
New bookmarks are not stored

Expected Results:  
New bookmarks are stored
Do you use Norton360 ?
No, I do not. I have TrendMicro.

I would update this bug a little bit. If I add some bookmark and in the Bookmark Manager, I press "Backup" - in this case it seems to me that bookmarks are stored and after I re-run Firefox everything is OK. But I did not have time to play more deeply.

So it looks whenever bookmarks are backed up - it is ok. But if firefox is closed before back-up, new bookmarks are lost.
It seems that the bookmark&history file (places.sqlite) in your Firefox Profile is locked.
We had this in the past from some stupid tools like Norton360 which locked the file.
What does it mean that it is locked ? Can I unlock it ?

The file looks ok, but it has around 11MB !!! Yes, 11 MegaBytes...

But if the file would be locked no one can write into it even when I backup the bookmarks. Or not ?
The file contains your bookmarks and your history including the favicons for the bookmarked sites and 11MB seems to be ok.

When you create a backup, the files are written to another file which should be in a backup subfolder.
Locked means that another application (in the Norton360 case Norton360 did that) locked the file for writing or it restored the old bookmark version because of an activated privacy feature.

Does you Trendmicro or another tool that you use support erasing the firefox history ?

Can you please try this:
a) create a manual backup of the file places.sql
b) open Firefox and export your bookmarks to a html file
c) close Firefox and try to delete the file.
d) start Firefox without placves.sql and import the bookmark from the html file if Firefox didn't restore the bookmarks.
Hello, and sorry for the late replay.

I tried it as you had described. FF3 restored places.sqlite without problems. Before it had 11MB, after restoration just 2.6MB. (just "history" contains sites with more than 6 days - other days are removed)

But then I tried to add one bookmark and close FF3. After I started FF3 again, the bookmark is lost again. So it does not have anything with Trendmicro, if I understand the problem correctly.
The test shows that the file itself isn't broken and it must be something else 
Could you try the Firefox safemode to be sure that no extension is causing this ?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode
The safemode will test the addons and what's remaining would be some other system issue like a Trendmicro.
I :
- started ff3 in safe mode - "firefox -safe-mode"
- added bookmark
- checked it - bookmark was there
- closed FF3 - file->close
- started ff3 again in safe mode
- checked the bookmark - bookmark is gone

Why are you sure that inside FF3, everything is OK ? It seems to me that the bookmarks file is just not dumped from memory to the disk when you work with bookmarks. And it is just dumped when one creates backup...

Maybe some setting inside FF3 ?
>Why are you sure that inside FF3, everything is OK ?
Because it works for everyone else ?
(except you of and a few people with Norton360 in the past)

If I could reproduce this, i would not ask the questions and we would not released the version because we do many tests with every Release.
The bookmark file should be written if you bookmark a page. It seems that it fails on your system to write to the file. No addon is causing this (works in the safemode) and the file database file isn't broken (you let it recreate).
The only thing that remains is that something on your system prevents Firefox to write that file.
Please, let mi help to analyze the situation.

I tried to create new profile. - Inside, bookmarks work well.
I tried to copy old profile into new profile, except Cache and bookmark backups - It works
Then I tried just delete those two directories (Cache, bookmarkackups)from my disk - and now I can store bookmarks and it works!

So it looks like something in those two directories prevented to store bookmarks?

I am not sure that now it will work forever. I can make more tests but now, everything seems to me OK.

PS: When I removed those 2 directories, after FF3 started, I saw bookmarks list as I had it before I updated from FF2 to FF3. But from today's backup I could restore bokkmarks which I added during tests.
It should not depend on the cache but maybe the places fails with a broken backup file ?
Component: Bookmarks & History → Storage
Product: Firefox → Toolkit
QA Contact: bookmarks → storage
This doesn't feel like a storage bug to me...
Component: Storage → Places
QA Contact: storage → places
Yes, probably the backup file got broken during update from FF2 to FF3. Anyway FF3 should report that it can't write into the file, shouldn't it ?
The problem disappeared if you follow steps described in bug 457325 comment 1.
I think that this bug may be closed as a duplicate of bug 457325.
original reporter, please check in about:config if you importBookmarksHTML is set to true, and set it to false.

Report your results here, please.
In my case - importBookmarksHTML was false. So this bug is likely not a duplicate of 457325.

As I wrote before, now it works. But next time I'd like to know if FF can not write into the file...
so for now i'm marking WFM, if you see the issue again please reopen
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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