History.dat grows -HUGE- upon crash

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jsallo
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Joined: May 28th, 2005, 12:19 pm
Location: NJ, USA

History.dat grows -HUGE- upon crash

Post by jsallo »

Searched all over to see if anyone else posted this.

Using FF 1.5 with all latest extensions on AMD Athlon 64 3200+ w/1 GB RAM running Win98SE with all patches.

At first I thought that FF was unstable with the large amount of RAM... it was slow to load and kept crashing.

My prefs file had bloated to almost 2MB... and the History.dat was 17+MB.

Booted in Safe Mode... Reset all the prefs. Now prefs is 230KB.

However, sometimes while Autosurfing, FF crashes and then History.dat zooms to 10MB+.

Deleting entries does not change the size of the file.

Anyone have a clue as to what may be going on?
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scratch
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Location: Massachusetts

Post by scratch »

prefs.js is plaintext, so you could look at it and see what's taking the extra space if it gets that large again.

what's autosurfing? what causes the crash? does your history look normal when you open the history panel in firefox?
old FatJohn
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Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old FatJohn »

Could be this <a href="http://secunia.com/advisories/17934/">Secunia - Advisories - Mozilla Firefox History Information Denial of Service Weakness</a> I guess...
jsallo
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Joined: May 28th, 2005, 12:19 pm
Location: NJ, USA

Post by jsallo »

Scratch, I'll PM you re: Autosurfing
Unsure what causes it to crash exactly...
Some site with 'malicious code' I guess... probably the DoS indicated by FatJohn (Thanks!)

All this could be avoided if the History.dat was a FLAT FILE like Bookmarks or prefs...
Why is History.dat written in something called MORK?!!! :(
Firefox 1.5 user
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Post by Firefox 1.5 user »

Not sure if this is in the right thread, but speaking of crashes: I am experiencing major crashes in Firefox 1.5 since upgrading it from the previous version. In order to solve this, I must first close the firefox extension (accessible by hitting CTRL, ALT and delete) and then reload the browser. This occurence is frequent, atleast a few times a day and even more.

I don't have any extensions and have a vanilla version on my system--and as far as I know, all my software installs (like Micromedia flash player) are all current. I hope this problem is resolved in a future release, as I am sure many people are suffering from such crashes.
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

FatJohn wrote:Could be this <a href="http://secunia.com/advisories/17934/">Secunia - Advisories - Mozilla Firefox History Information Denial of Service Weakness</a> I guess...

Here's the related bugzilla report
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319004
overlong document.title setting can corrupt history data, causing non-responsive temporary hang (crash?) on subsequent startups
Alice Wyman
VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

No, user, this is not the right thread. This thread has nothing to do with your problem. Try the standard diagnostic, and if that doesn't work, try creating a new topic.
old FatJohn
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Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old FatJohn »

Alice wrote:Here's the related bugzilla report
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319004
overlong document.title setting can corrupt history data, causing non-responsive temporary hang (crash?) on subsequent startups


Always nice to see another fixed bug.
jsallo
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Joined: May 28th, 2005, 12:19 pm
Location: NJ, USA

Post by jsallo »

Has this patch been applied to FF 1.5? How do I get/install it?
VanillaMozilla
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Joined: November 7th, 2005, 11:26 am

Post by VanillaMozilla »

jsallo wrote:Has this patch been applied to FF 1.5? How do I get/install it?

Download the latest nightly build. Unfortunately, these are for testing only (no support given!), and sometimes are a little buggy. But if you don't mind taking care of minor problems yourself, I can recommend them.

But seriously, your chances of hitting this exploit are probably pretty small, and your chances of being harmed by it are remote. That's why there's no official patch yet.
jsallo
Posts: 69
Joined: May 28th, 2005, 12:19 pm
Location: NJ, USA

Post by jsallo »

jsallo
Posts: 69
Joined: May 28th, 2005, 12:19 pm
Location: NJ, USA

Post by jsallo »

The NoScript extension solves the problem as well... As long as you check 'Truncate Titles' under the Advanced Tab
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scratch
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Post by scratch »

except NoScript is major overkill for, well, everyone.
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