randomly losing history

[OldBrowserInUse]

It happened twice now this week. Yesterday I had a bunch of tabs open, one of them got stuck, then seamonkey crashed. When I got it restarted I noticed I was suddenly missing about 18 months of browser history. Tried looking in my profile folder, there was no places.sqlite-corrupt file (maybe because I had restarted seamonkey so it was already too late?) to try to recover from.

Then tonight around 1:20am, I had the browser window open on one monitor, and was typing stuff into Notepad in a window on the other monitor. Suddenly in the middle of my typing, the History window jumped up, grabbed focus, and stole a few keystrokes before I realized what was going on. I paused typing, looked, and WTF?!? There was suddenly another 9 days of history just gone for no apparent reason. Again I looked at the files in the profile folder, and still no places.sqlite-corrupt file to try to recover anything from.

It's an older laptop running W7 x64, Seamonkey version 2.53.8.1 (yeah, I know it's old, but I am reluctant to go to 2.57 and lose any more extensions.)

I never used to have any issues with 2.49, that one was rock solid and I could (and often did/still do, on another older desktop running XP) keep the same session running for 4-6 months before a power failure would cause it to close. But it seems this 2.53 version has, um, issues - lots of hangs, crashes, and now data losses.

There are only a few extensions that I have been using about forever:
Noscript 5.1.9
RequestPolicy Continued 0.5.32
UserAgentSwitcher 0.7.3
(and more recently) GitHub/GitLab Web Components Polyfill 1.2.18.1

Has anybody seen anything like this? Any idea what might be going on, what could cause this?

[rdtom]

Tried looking in my profile folder, there was no places.sqlite-corrupt file (maybe because I had restarted seamonkey so it was already too late?) to try to recover from.

Restarting SeaMonkey will not delete places.sqlite.corrupt file
It will stay there until you delete it
and it is places.sqlite.corrupt not places.sqlite-corrupt

[OldBrowserInUse]

Regardless of typos, the "corrupt" file is still not in my profile folder, so I can't try the recovery procedure on it. And no, I did not delete it either, it just isn't there.

[Frank Lion]

And no, I did not delete it either, it just isn't there.

Unless you had a backup then that History is probably gone.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14832589

But it seems this 2.53 version has, um, issues - lots of hangs, crashes, and now data losses.

For you, it seems, but not many reports around of that by other people using the 2.53 versions.

You may well have profile or maybe extensions incompatibility problems. Back up your existing profile. Try SafeMode and also make a new additional testing profile would be the next moves. (see http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14867877 for details on how to do those)

Suddenly in the middle of my typing, the History window jumped up, grabbed focus

Using a hotkey combination when typing in Notepad?

Seamonkey version 2.53.8.1 (yeah, I know it's old, but I am reluctant to go to 2.57 and lose any more extensions.)

Only a few betatesters are using 2.57 and the latest SM version is 2.53.11.1, so you're only a few point versions behind.

[rdtom]

Check your machine
Randomly losing things could be a sign that your hard drive is failing
Or your RAM is going bad

[OldBrowserInUse]

You may well have profile or maybe extensions incompatibility problems. Back up your existing profile. Try SafeMode and also make a new additional testing profile would be the next moves.

There are not that many extensions I even have. Just the above listed ones that I use often. There is also
HTTPS Everywhere 5.2.21 that I hardly ever use since almost everything these days is already https anyway.
Then there are
ChatZilla 0.9.97
DOM Inspector 2.0.19
Lightning 5.8.8.1
I don't remember installing these (other than HTTPS Everywhere), I think they came packaged with seamonkey in one version or another. And those few plus the ones in first post are all there is. I can try disabling these others, but since the problem is intermittent and unpredictable, how long would I need to go without them before concluding they were not the problem?

It would be more problematic to surf pretty much anywhere without Noscript and RequestPolicyContinued, and even nonfunctional without UserAgentSwitcher. Kinda like asking someone to uninstall their AV and firewall for debugging reasons.

Using a hotkey combination when typing in Notepad?

I have not set up any hotkeys, the only possibility would be whatever came set up with a default install. For Notepad that is darn few. I think the relevant one for Seamonkey might be Cntrl-H for History, followed by either delete or backspace to remove entries (though I don't know how they got selected). But given the layout of my keyboard either of these would be quite a stretch away from the content I was typing the second time to have hit accidentally. And for the first incident I was not even using the keyboard at the time.

Check your machine
Randomly losing things could be a sign that your hard drive is failing
Or your RAM is going bad

Hmm, maybe next time I put it down for the night I can leave memtest to run overnight to see if it finds anything. But it does seem odd that "random" losses only affect seamonkey and nothing else.

[Frank Lion]

I can try disabling these others, but since the problem is intermittent and unpredictable, how long would I need to go without them before concluding they were not the problem?

Once you know, as you do now, that your problem is not widespread, i.e. not the SM program, but a problem with your profile, then what you do about it is up to you.

If I had hangs, crashes and data losses then I'm damn sure I'd fix it, but if you don't want to troubleshoot the cause of the problem, then don't. Just live with it.

[frg]

2.53.8.1 still has the broken clear private data dialog in. So if you use this with bookmarks or history it might account for this. But usually it just did throw an error or did nothing.

I would update first in any case 2.53.11.1 has about 1000 to 2000 changes over 2.53.8.1 in. Latest 2.53.12b1 beta should be stable too.

FRG

[OldBrowserInUse]

yeah, I know this is an old thread, but I did find a partial answer.... which of course leads to more questions

Hmm, maybe next time I put it down for the night I can leave memtest to run overnight to see if it finds anything. But it does seem odd that "random" losses only affect seamonkey and nothing else.

I left memtest running overnight several times, it never found anything. Also ran HDD diagnostics, also found nothing. Checked SMART values, there are no reallocations either, so not a hardware problem. Even ran chkdsk, no problems.

2.53.8.1 still has the broken clear private data dialog in. So if you use this with bookmarks or history it might account for this.

I almost never use that dialog, since any data deletions I do would be for specific items, never a wholesale clearing. And I have yet to use that dialog on this particular laptop, so not that...

I would update first in any case 2.53.11.1 has about 1000 to 2000 changes over 2.53.8.1 in. Latest 2.53.12b1 beta should be stable too.

This comment made me go look at release notes. For 2.53.12 I saw the item about adding placeDB page limit to about:support. Following up on that led me to bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1753729 which seems to match my problem. The discussion there was about the config item(s) places.history.expiration.* so I started looking at old backups of prefs.js, and sure enough that seems to fit too. This had been somewhere north of 125K earlier, but had somehow been cut down to 7K afterwards.

Since the bug discussion mentioned available disk space, I checked that and was shocked to find less than 1GB free. I cleared out a bunch of space but it soon shrank again. It was an ongoing struggle to find what kept eating the space. The culprit eventually proved to be HP Advisor that was writing about 150MB of log files full of useless repeating nonsensical error messages every day; trying to find an updated version of this to correct the error messages proved impossible so I just removed that, and finally the disk space shrinkage is only what *I* actually use, not some mystery garbage.

It's problematic that Seamonkey starts destroying data at a point where Windows itself has not yet begun to complain about low disk space.... surely it SHOULD have been the other way around? Because how else will most users ever debug this? At the very least, give the user a warning about disk space so they can clean up first, rather than just silently destroying data? For Firefox this was discussed at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1772746 but they resolved it as WONTFIX - can Seamonkey choose differently, to at least give users a message about the problem and a chance to free up disk space first? Even if it means delivering the message first and then just crashing, this would be preferable to data destruction! This is REALLY important since running short of disk space is a VERY common situation and NEEDS to be handled gracefully.

I used about:config to set this 125K value for both places.history.expiration.max_pages and places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages. The problem has not happened again since this change.

@frg - I tried looking up the history of toolkit/components/places/PlacesExpiration.jsm, am I reading it right that this would have come to Seamonkey for the first time in 2.53.1 ? And did the fix from bug 1753729 to simplify ever make it into Seamonkey, possibly in 2.53.15 ? or later?

I would update first

and yes, I've updated several times since then...

In terms of repairing the damage, I have several partial history databases from backups in different timeframes, but none of them is complete. Is there any way to combine them into a single mysql database?

[Frank Lion]

This comment made me go look at release notes. For 2.53.12 I saw the item about adding placeDB page limit to about:support. Following up on that led me to bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1753729 which seems to match my problem. The discussion there was about the config item(s) places.history.expiration.* so I started looking at old backups of prefs.js, and sure enough that seems to fit too. This had been somewhere north of 125K earlier, but had somehow been cut down to 7K afterwards.

You've lost me. What has the size of prefs.js got to do with the size of places.sqlite, where history is stored?

My History goes back 18 months and places.sqlite is 21MB in size. Both my places.history.expiration.max_pages and places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages are set to 999999 in about:config

In addition, every 3 months I use 'View by Site' for History in the sidebar to delete unwanted history from sites such as Google, etc to not build up the history too much and slow down searching.

Since the bug discussion mentioned available disk space, I checked that and was shocked to find less than 1GB free. ...

This is REALLY important since running short of disk space is a VERY common situation and NEEDS to be handled gracefully.

If your Win7 is still not warning you of low storage left when you only have 1 GB left (!) then your problem is there. It is not SeaMonkey's job to do this.

Running short of disk space might well have been VERY common in 2005 with 40GB HDDs, but in this modern age of 500GB+ storage it not longer is. You just have to bite the bullet and change your PC more often than every 20 years.

[OldBrowserInUse]

You've lost me. What has the size of prefs.js got to do with the size of places.sqlite, where history is stored?

Ooops! Looks like I did not explain this very clearly. I didn't mean the size of prefs.js. I meant using multiple backups of this file to compare the contents over time. Specifically, the entries places.history.expiration.max_pages and places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages and how these values vary over time. For me they had been somewhere north of 125K earlier, but had somehow been cut down to 7K afterwards, with no changes on my part.

My History goes back 18 months and places.sqlite is 21MB in size. Both my places.history.expiration.max_pages and places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages are set to 999999 in about:config

Before this issue mine had been vaguely similar. Places.sqlite was ~40MB, going back 1.5 years (to the time I first started using this particular laptop). And for Preferences, under History, I routinely set "Remember form and search history for up to" - 99999999 days, since I want this to be permanent. But then, with NO warning, it just abruptly changed itself and destroyed data that I had wanted to keep.

If your Win7 is still not warning you of low storage left when you only have 1 GB left (!) then your problem is there. It is not SeaMonkey's job to do this.

Agreed that is is a disk space problem, that is why I mentioned this detail. But it is also not Seamonkey's job to make a policy decision to destroy my data. If it is unable to continue because of disk space - and also please note, it did not reach zero, there was still ~600MB left, so surely no need to do anything drastic just yet - the proper course is to tell the user and then EXIT, not silently delete stuff willy-nilly. I've been using this browser and its predecessors for DECADES and have NEVER seen anything like this before. I think it is new behavior introduced with NO warning in the 2.53 branch (see the history for the file toolkit/components/places/PlacesExpiration.jsm).

As for Windows warnings, sometimes (though not in this particular case) I have found the popup about disk space is really a pop-under, meaning it is hidden under the window of whatever I am viewing in fullscreen mode, like a browser window, so I might not see it until later. Which is why a message to the user from Seamonkey itself would be useful.

Running short of disk space might well have been VERY common in 2005 with 40GB HDDs, but in this modern age of 500GB+ storage it not longer is.

You are making quite a number of unwarranted assumptions here. The HDD in question is not 40GB and the laptop in question is not from 2005. If you absolutely MUST know, it is a multiboot system so the HDD is shared by multiple OS installs, so effectively somewhat smaller than on a single-OS system. Even with this detail, it is more than adequate for what little disk space *I* actually use; there should have been hundreds of GBs of free space.

And also "in this modern age" we would expect (or at least hope?) that vendor preinstalled system management software (which is what HP Advisor is, it is supposed to manage system and firmware updates) would actually WORK properly rather than write multiple hundreds of GBs of nonsensical repeating error messages until the disk is full. Yet here it is, still happening. So yes, Seamonkey (and for that matter, any other modern software) DOES need to cope with such things as running short of disk space.

You just have to bite the bullet and change your PC more often than every 20 years.

More unwarranted assumptions. When this issue happened, the laptop had only been in service for 18 months.