Visits to one website do not appear in history though others do.
Background: I just had to rebuild my Linux system partition from backup.
After doing this I discovered that although most websites behave perfectly with Firefox, there is one website which now never appears in the history though I have visited the pages with no problem.
This is a problem because I use the change in color of links to the website to keep track of which pages I have visited. I have looked to see if Firefox has a list of sites which are not tracked but have been unable to find it.
PS, after the restore all my old history was restored including visits to the website which is now causing a problem.
Chosen solution
If you still have a full profile backup then you can check the compatibility.ini file in each profile to see what Firefox version last used this profile.
You can possibly copy files like these with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover specific data.
- bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
- favicons: favicons.sqlite
- bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
- cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
- formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
- logins.json (passwords) and key4.db (58+) or key3.db (57 and older) (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
if you only have key3.db then make sure to remove an existing key4.db - cert9.db (58+) or cert8.db (57 and older) for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
if you only have cert8.db then make sure to remove an existing cert9.db - persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling checker dictionary
- permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
- sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)
All Replies (5)
The System Details list shows you use a Firefox 57 version.
If you restored a profile from a newer Firefox version then it is quite possible that some files aren't compatible with that older version.
Both firefox and profile are from same version so far as I know (both were restored from same backup date). There is no problem in operation other than this. All my profile information appears correct. The restored history file is present and completely functional so far as I can tell.
Supposing I have differing versions. What do I do to get the profile right? It would also be useful to know what in the profile would cause cause one and only one site to not appear in the history.
Chosen Solution
If you still have a full profile backup then you can check the compatibility.ini file in each profile to see what Firefox version last used this profile.
You can possibly copy files like these with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover specific data.
- bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
- favicons: favicons.sqlite
- bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
- cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
- formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
- logins.json (passwords) and key4.db (58+) or key3.db (57 and older) (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
if you only have key3.db then make sure to remove an existing key4.db - cert9.db (58+) or cert8.db (57 and older) for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
if you only have cert8.db then make sure to remove an existing cert9.db - persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling checker dictionary
- permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
- sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)
Thanks for the answer but compatibility.ini shows the proper version. All the files seem to have been recovered by my backup restore. This answer has me looking in the profile folder for anything that might reference the site I am having trouble with, but I have not found the cause. I also wonder if there could be anything in the pages served up by this site (in the header for example) that might influence whether the page is remembered in the history.
Thanks again. Due to the many files in the profile directory I instead looked at my restore procedure. I had restored two full backups and several incremental backups. These overwrote any files that changed but I had not assured that files were deleted that had been deleted between backups. I went back and completely restored only the latest full backup and subsequent incremental backups.
After that, everything worked properly. Apparently this problem was caused by a previous file that should have been deleted. I do think this is both a strange and interesting side effect. It's almost like a feature: a single site treated as private.