History not really cleared
Hello,
I am running Aurora 14.0a2 on Ubuntu Lucid.
Accidentally sometimes I removed the "most visited" folder. Meanwhile I have cleared the cache and history a zillion times (the settings are such that everything except passwords is cleared). But nonetheless, when opening a new tab, the nine buttons show links I had visited long, long ago.
I have tried several solutions - checked the database with "places mainenance", and reinstalled "most visited" folder following the procedure described here , but to no avail. After a fresh clearing of the history, the old links appear again in a newly opened tab ("Ctrl-T"). When surfing around, the recent links are stored and shown in a newtab, but when history is "cleared", the old ghosts appear again.
This is also the case when I start Aurora in safe mode, all add-ons and themes disabled. Makes no difference.
So, history is not really cleared. Where are such persistent links stored, and how can one get rid of them?
Thanks for any hints!
Chosen solution
you can try to backup your bookmarks, rename/delete the places.sqlite file (which stores bookmars&history) from your Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data profile folder and import your bookmarks again afterwards.
edit: & the nine tabs currently shown are stored in chromeapps.sqlite, but it is not save to delete that file since it will break other things like the search engine on the default start page.
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Chosen Solution
you can try to backup your bookmarks, rename/delete the places.sqlite file (which stores bookmars&history) from your Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data profile folder and import your bookmarks again afterwards.
edit: & the nine tabs currently shown are stored in chromeapps.sqlite, but it is not save to delete that file since it will break other things like the search engine on the default start page.
Modified by philipp
Thanks, Madperson!
Renaming the places.sqlite did the trick. Now the phantom links are gone, and I still have all my bookmarks without having to reimport them. Only thing that was gone were the favicons, but that really is the least problem.
The question remains: Why does "clear history" do not clear everything when so chosen? And besides: There is no file "chromeapps.sqlite" in my profile folder, but there is one "chromeappsstore.sqlite". Is that the same object?
yes, you're right it's the "chromeappsstore.sqlite" file - sorry, i did pull that one out of my memory without double-checking.
for an automatic restoration of your bookmarks' favicons you can use the check places extension.
as for the question of what might have caused the issue in the first place, i lack the inside knowledge of how the places database is structured and what exactly is triggered when you press "clear history" in firefox UI to give you a sound answer to that. it's likely however that the database got corrupted someway and now that you've renamed it & firefox will build it up from scratch again that this error won't happen again.