Restore session from moz_formhistory
Hello, I've got a problem with restoring my yesterday's session. I'm using Windows 10 with Fireox ESR 52.8.0 on it. Last night my Windows updated. Today when I opened Mozilla for the first time after it, it shows no history at all and the opened tab says that there's difficulty with restoring the last session, but in the window below the only card is the main page of Mozilla. I always keep a bunch of tabs opened and obviously they disappeared. I wanted to bring the AppData folder of Mozilla back to the previous version, as I always do in such cases, but it only shows me the version from today. I checked the databases in the profile folder and I see that some data is still inside them. It looks a bit weird for me though: in places.sqlite I see some pages that I visited quite a time ago, but I see much more entries in formhistory.sqlite, and it contains at least some of search queries I typed yesterday. I would like to ask for any help with restoring the session, as I suppose it should be possible assuming the data is not corrupted, but I've got little understanding how is it organized there and how Mozilla handle the database. Any hints appreciated.
الحل المُختار
Form History stores data you enter into forms and search terms you submitted through the search bar.
Session History normally is stored in the sessionstore-backups folder. Is that what you already checked? This may be more detail than you need if you found it in other threads, but just in case:
Firefox creates numerous session history files, but because session history is only for the immediately previous session, it is unfortunately too easy to lose it. Could you start by making a backup of your existing session history files? Here's how:
Do not exit Firefox, or if you closed it, don't re-open it.
(1) To open your profile folder...
If Firefox is still running:
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.
If Firefox is closed:
Type or paste the following into the Windows Run dialog or the system search box and press Enter to launch Windows Explorer:
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
In that folder, do you see a semi-randomly-named folder? If so, click into it. If you find multiple such folders, find the one that was most recently updated.
(2) Copy out session history files
In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder.
(3) What files did you find?
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are (pre-Firefox 56):
- recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
- recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
- previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?
To preview the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html
That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you.
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الحل المُختار
Form History stores data you enter into forms and search terms you submitted through the search bar.
Session History normally is stored in the sessionstore-backups folder. Is that what you already checked? This may be more detail than you need if you found it in other threads, but just in case:
Firefox creates numerous session history files, but because session history is only for the immediately previous session, it is unfortunately too easy to lose it. Could you start by making a backup of your existing session history files? Here's how:
Do not exit Firefox, or if you closed it, don't re-open it.
(1) To open your profile folder...
If Firefox is still running:
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.
If Firefox is closed:
Type or paste the following into the Windows Run dialog or the system search box and press Enter to launch Windows Explorer:
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
In that folder, do you see a semi-randomly-named folder? If so, click into it. If you find multiple such folders, find the one that was most recently updated.
(2) Copy out session history files
In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder.
(3) What files did you find?
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are (pre-Firefox 56):
- recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
- recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
- previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?
To preview the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html
That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you.
Actually, it turned out that I had happened to make a lot of fuss over nothing: the re-install of Mozilla helped. I thought the question didn't pass because it showed me some message about technical difficulties, I wouldn't have bothered you otherwise. Thank you though for the response