Does Syncing mitigate the risk of having a corrupt database file?
Hello
as most FF users, I've run into the issue of having a corrupt places or cookies database file several times in the last 15 years of usage.
I would like to know if Syncing can mitigate the risk of having a corrupt database file ever again? In other words, do FF servers recognize a corrupt file if received from my device? And would it help replacing it with the last intact file received?
All Replies (3)
Using Sync only means that bookmarks and other data is uploaded to the Sync server, each profile still has its own places.sqlite file and this file is only read locally by Sync to prepare a list of what bookmarks needs to be uploaded. When it goes wrong locally with managing the bookmarks and the places.sqlite database is corrupted then Sync isn't able to read the file and upload content to the Sync server. When places.sqlite gets corrupted then you can usually see this in a Sync error log file listed on the about:sync-log page. In a lot of cases issues with places.sqlite getting corrupted is linked to syncing bookmarks to a mobile device, possibly by making a lot of changes in a short time to the bookmarks.
cor-el said
Using Sync only means that bookmarks and other data is uploaded to the Sync server, each profile still has its own places.sqlite file and this file is only read locally by Sync to prepare a list of what bookmarks needs to be uploaded. When it goes wrong locally with managing the bookmarks and the places.sqlite database is corrupted then Sync isn't able to read the file and upload content to the Sync server. When places.sqlite gets corrupted then you can usually see this in a Sync error log file listed on the about:sync-log page. In a lot of cases issues with places.sqlite getting corrupted is linked to syncing bookmarks to a mobile device, possibly by making a lot of changes in a short time to the bookmarks.
Thanks for the reply
So in case the file gets corrupt, would I be able to retrieve the last working file from the Sync server?
No, there is no file on the Sync server, there is only a list of bookmarks on the Sync server that has been uploaded from all connected devices. For the bookmarks there are normally the backups in the bookmarkbackups folder that can be used to rebuild the bookmarks when a new places.sqlite needs to be rebuild. Because there is no backup for the history history, this means that history is lost if places.sqlite needs to be rebuild.