Missing / deleted history - 'New and improved' releases add new features, improved (?) function, but eliminate some options and browsing history...
This has been a problem ever since updating from Firefox 8 to FF 10. I noticed that there was about a month missing from my history after that update. Checking my settings in 'about:config', there was no change in 'browser.history_expire_days_min' or 'browser.history_expire_days.mirror'. The value has been set at '720' ever since installing FF 3.6 over three years ago.
Admittedly, I don't install new updates the moment they become available... However, every time that I've installed an update, more and more of my history simply vanishes. Not a few days or weeks, mind you. but 3, 6, and even 9 months of history GONE!
I just don't understand why this option was eliminated from Privacy Preferences, forcing users to tinker with the settings in 'about:config' instead. Since users are given a warning before going on to the settings page, why would any programmer think this is a good alternative to the Preferences pane???
Now I'm down to history for February and March of this year... You can bet that I'm not going to be updating to any new releases for a very long time, if ever.
It seems that 'software bloat' isn't a 'Microsoft-only' disease...
New 'features' + 'improved' perfomance = New demands for disk space + improved glitches...
Frankly, I'm getting sick of this...
Modified by MacUser_69
All Replies (9)
hello, the browser.history_expire_days* preferences are deprecated and won't have any effect in newer versions. you might want to increase the value of places.history.expiration.max_pages instead - for more information refer to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Places_Expiration
Further to my comment in your duplicate thread /questions/954637 have you thought of installing the addon places maintenance
It has a feature displaying the current statistics for your History and bookmarks, allowing you to see whether or not History still has free space remaining.
You may even find that the addon is able to fix a problem with your database.
As you are no doubt aware the bookmarks and history are stored in the same database places.sqlite and obviously the amount of data will grow over time, the allocated space may not increase.
Might be worth mentioning that - places.history.expiration.max_pages - doesn't exist so you have to create new integer. Old way based on age was much more manageable and should at least be an option if not default.
Why not try that add-on I mentioned and look at your stats.
You say
Old way based on age was much more manageable and should at least be an option if not default.
The problem was that did not work. Because bookmarks take precedence History could still have been overwritten. Now at least it will always preserve at the very least the last 7 days of history.
I note the article linked in a post above says
places.history.expiration.max_pages: The maximum number of pages that may be retained in the database before starting to expire. Default value is calculated on startup and put into the places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages preference.
I have not tried creating and using that pref but that sounds as if it is setting a new max, and that it will limit and reduce the number of History items, not increase the number retained.
See also the comments in the source code.
Mozilla screwed this up royally. No warning, no nothing. Lost a lot of history. I upgraded from the latest 3.x to 18 or 19. It was fine for a long time. One day the history from my clean profile got trimmed. I haven't looked into it cause I thought some incompatible add-on was causing it. Shame. Although I keep backups thank god it didn't trim my actual profile's history to the extent it trimmed my clean one's.
Not sure if it is relevant but the structure of the places.sqlite database changed recently, and jumping all the way from fx3.6 to fx18 or 19 could conceivably have been a factor. It is best to keep Firefox up-to-date.
Glad at least that you keep backups.
History backups are slightly problematic, because if the places.sqlite database is backed up and restored to an old copy the bookmarks then regress. As you will be aware already, Firefox itself makes no History backups, and has no facility to restore History only.
Well like I wrote. It was ok for a good two or three months. Then one night a friend came over, after he left I took a random look at the history tree in the library in my clean profile and saw the tree was missing some entries. Filtered for / and thought that "idiot" deleted something cause a lot of entries were missing and I only had the history of the past 7 days.
On my main profile I found it odd that it was always stuck at 90 mib (it went down from 110) during my manual backups. If I migrate I usually first set up the profile and check everything. If I remember correctly everything was fine. Anyway it's all good now. Good I bothered to search more thorough this time and not blame it on some add-on.
Note that SQLite database files always keep the same size and do not shrink their size if you delete history or bookmarks. You need to vacuum places.sqlite to shrink the size to the minimum of 10 MB. The places.sqlite gets increased in 10 MB chunks (other SQLite files have different chunks sizes).