623489 - When a corrupt Places database is replaced, try to save and restore history

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Places, defect, P3)

Description

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

We currently lose history, we should not.

Comment 1

[Palmer Eldritch]

Related :
Bug 607211 – History is not working in Firefox 3.6.11 it is empty
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=607211
Bug 641207 – Bookmarks display in sidebar empty, but bookmarks show when clicking bookmarks button
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641207
Bug 676996 – Repeated corruption of places.sqlite
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676996
Bug 384420 – History and Bookmarks should be in two separate files
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384420

I am suffering from places corruption a lot - and there is no way to get history back. Also I have the symptoms of bugs above - namely I can see my bookmarks and history but not when opening the library window. There must be a way to get at least the URLs from history - and the complete bookmarks. Bookmarks can be exported in html but not in json - firefox should restore bookmarks when deleting the corrupt places.sqlite. Also there should be an option to *NOT* delete a corrupted places file - as I can perfectly well visit my bookmarks and see the visited sites (links are colored properly) - the only thing I can't do is access the Library - but I'd rather not access the Library than manually restore the corrupted places every restart.

Thanks

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

> I am suffering from places corruption a lot - and there is no way to get
> history back.

Did you investigate the reasons? checked disk health? tested memory?

> Also I have the symptoms of bugs above - namely I can see my
> bookmarks and history but not when opening the library window.

This is symptom of bad data in the database caused by broken add-ons, more than corruption

> Bookmarks can be exported in html but not in json

Why?

> firefox should restore
> bookmarks when deleting the corrupt places.sqlite.

it does, but not if the json backups don't work.

> Also there should be an
> option to *NOT* delete a corrupted places fil

it does not, really corrupted files are renamed to places.sqlite.corrupt

Comment 3

[Palmer Eldritch]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [:mak] from comment #2)
> > I am suffering from places corruption a lot - and there is no way to get
> > history back.
> 
> Did you investigate the reasons? checked disk health? tested memory?
> 
> > Also I have the symptoms of bugs above - namely I can see my
> > bookmarks and history but not when opening the library window.
> 
> This is symptom of bad data in the database caused by broken add-ons, more
> than corruption
> 
Exactly - it is software related corruption - FF crashes, windows BSODs, and those all too frequent FF updates.

> > Bookmarks can be exported in html but not in json
> 
> Why?
> 
No clue - html I can see them all (I think) - json the file exported is 150 bytes. It is the kind of corruption - I am telling you so you see that the data is there - but the way the json is created the data is unreachable - though the way the html is created it's reachable.

> > firefox should restore
> > bookmarks when deleting the corrupt places.sqlite.
> 
> it does, but not if the json backups don't work.
> 
I mean it should try the html also when json fails

> > Also there should be an
> > option to *NOT* delete a corrupted places fil
> 
> it does not, really corrupted files are renamed to places.sqlite.corrupt
I mean not replace it at all - at least till this bug (history non retrieved) is squashed

Thanks

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

(In reply to Palmer Eldritch from comment #3)
> Exactly - it is software related corruption - FF crashes, windows BSODs, and
> those all too frequent FF updates.

BSODs indicates broken drivers or broken hardware, software cannot cause BSODs, apart some antivirus and some virus, since they install hooks that act at kernel level like drivers.

> No clue - html I can see them all (I think) - json the file exported is 150
> bytes.

yes, most likely due to the corruption of the database, but creating a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing-profiles) and importing into it the bookmarks.html file through the Library window should work. Just don't manually copy any file from the old profile to the new one.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

we're already doing this and what's left to do is some kind of history backup (per bug 431274), this bug is not useful.