839044 - Location bar shows URLs that are not in history or bookmarks

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Drift]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:21.0) Gecko/20130206 Firefox/21.0
Build ID: 20130206031027

Steps to reproduce:

A complete clear of browser history, then I started to write a URL.


Actual results:

My URL got auto-completed with an element that is not in bookmarks, and no longer in history.


Expected results:

Items that are no longer in browser's history should not show up in location bar. It happens to be a privacy bug in places.sqlite. See
http://superuser.com/questions/495574/firefox-completes-the-address-bar-with-content-absent-from-my-history
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/932530

Choosing to set Firefox to complete the address bar with elements only from bookmarks does not help. A deep clean of browser's history does not help. "Places Maintenance" add-on does not help.
A complete removal of places.sqlite can fix this. The downside is that, this means you have to delete your browsing history. Alternatively, you can clear via terminal as described in the first link above, but that means that something does not work as it is supposed to do.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Dupe of bug 837549?

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Drift from comment #0)
> A complete clear of browser history, then I started to write a URL.

So, you selected Clear Recent History, selected Everything from the dropdown, and then checked "Browsing And Download history".
Then you tried to search for something and it was suggested.
Could you please try to CTRL+H (history sidebar) and search for the same term there? does the page appear?
Also please do the same with CTRL+B (bookmarks sidebar).

Comment 3

[Drift]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [:mak] from comment #2)

> So, you selected Clear Recent History, selected Everything from the
> dropdown, and then checked "Browsing And Download history".

Exactly. I did remove everything (Browsing & Download history, Form & Search History, Cookies, Cache, Active Logins, Offline Website Data, Site Preferences)

> Then you tried to search for something and it was suggested.

Exactly.

> Could you please try to CTRL+H (history sidebar) and search for the same
> term there? does the page appear?
> Also please do the same with CTRL+B (bookmarks sidebar).

In the original firefox profile the auto-suggested URLs are not bookmarked, and won't show in the bookmarks sidebar (or elsewhere, or in the bookmarks). These URLs won't show in history as well. 

I did clone the default firefox profile before reporting. The cloned profile is my new default profile. In the cloned profile I cleaned places.sqlite as suggested in the first link (superuser) and in the last comment in the second link (support.mozilla) in my comment #0; this seemed to solve the issue. I've then proceeded to make the cloned profile my new default profile, and I decided to "(re)start fresh" wiping places.sqlite nevertheless.

In the cloned profile the issue appears to be solved.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I see, could have been some sort of data coherency problem.
If you still have the original places.sqlite and are comfortable with sharing it, you could mail it to me for checking.
In any case unless we figure what's up directly on that db, this doesn't have enough info to solve.