Password History Export - PM can lose passwords Topic is solved

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Occasionally I find that PM has lost passwords for a site. All passwords for a specific site.

I have PM set with a complex master password that I enter on startup and all passwords are stored by PM.

I have secure password generator and saved password editor extensions to give me unique passwords and the ability to list them.

Twice now I have logged into Deviantart and have been unable to complete a post as the page has seemingly locked up. When I have refreshed the page it seems that I have been forcibly logged-out but when I come to re-login I find that PM can no longer auto-complete the password. Worse than that, when I look at the usernames/passwords stored within the master password file using saved password editor - then none of my old logins exist for that site any more. They are all gone.

I have several accounts at DA that log into daily and each of them have been removed.

All my other usernames/passwords are present and OK for all other sites. Just the login details for this particular site are gone, all of them. Luckily I have a password export XML stored in an encrypted area on a remote drive that I can refer to and when I look there I can retrieve the password details successfully so all is not lost.

This is also a reason for me to maintain Firefox on the same machine as it also has the same passwords built into its profile password file, I use it a second source of password data in case of a Palemoon profile corruption. I open Firefox, export its passwords and then extract the data I need,

Two maybe three questions:

Has anyone else experienced this? First time this occurred I put it down to bad luck, second time it worries me. The first time it occurred, I was logged out and every time I tried to log into a site PM cleared the login details instead of accessing them. Several site details were lost. I had to recreate my profile to recover the situation.

This time it isn't as bad - just one site's details lost and no others affected.

Is there an extension such as the password exporter that can save the hashed password file on a regular timed basis so that I can retrieve an earlier uncorrupted version when such a thing occurs again for another site? If not then it would be bloody nice to have such a tool. If the password file is the sole container of vital information then data loss or corruption is at the whim of the program, each of my passwords is utterly unique and the loss of them would cripple me.

I need, in fact we ALL need a tool to ensure the password file is capable of backup/restore. Any pointers as how to do this manually would be appreciated. I can set up a scheduled task if I know the exact file to backup, if this is a sensible thing to do.

What makes this situation much more frustrating is that when I attempt to relogin using PM, I just cannot as DA uses re-captcha to test for bots and potentially dodgy logins, I am now shut out completely from Deviantart.

[Frasier]

Maybe over-kill but FEBE Backup your Pale Moon data works well for such things.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Maybe over-kill but

As listed, I have something that will do that already, and yes it is overkill for a simple backup.

I need something that does it on-the-fly, regularly without user interaction. I don't want to backup on the occasion I remember, I want the tool to backup for me whether I remember or not. Just the password file, nothing else.

[Frasier]

What to backup can be selected:

When can also be scheduled:

[yereverluvinuncleber]

OK, that is useful then. Thanks.

However, I still think it is a bit of an overkill. If I could just backup the password file that would be far better for me. I'll do some digging.

I am more interested now in finding out if this has happened before to anyone else? Is this a known bug?

[yereverluvinuncleber]

A quick check on t'net tells me that passwords are stored in the key4.db and logins.json files, can anyone tell me if I just backup these two files then will I be able to use these to backup for restoring passwords in the future?

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Hello?

Anyone?

[Frasier]

A quick check on t'net tells me that passwords are stored in the key4.db and logins.json files, can anyone tell me if I just backup these two files then will I be able to use these to backup for restoring passwords in the future?

Might have a look at this thread: Easiest way to copy passwords only.

[therube]

Maybe one of your extensions is interfering?

As a test, I would create a new, clean Profile, & then only copy over your existing password/master password files, & see if you can get DA to fault?

I have secure password generator and saved password editor extensions

SPG doesn't sound like it would change (write to) your password files, but SPE sure sounds like it would.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Save Password Editor is only ever editing passwords when I specifically require it to. Otherwise it is quiescent and just sits in the background.

When PM gets its knickers in a twist then the password thing happens.

More information: Looking back at what I was doing - it is possible that this time that I had just changed the user agent as when accessing Deviantart I was asked to relogin having been logged in already. When I attempted to login using the new user agent string, I suspect this was when all the usernames/passwords for that site were removed.

I had been testing the Eclipsed Moon extension that changes the user agent. I should have put two and two together.
However, I had removed Eclipsed Moon but I had not yet restarted PM. The user agent string may have been set incorrectly prior to the restart.

[Al6bus]

Imho, febe is ruin, i don't recommend any simple users to use this combine

[yereverluvinuncleber]

I have set up a daily scheduled process that calls copyprofile.bat that does a xcopy /s /i /c on the current profile and gives it a date/time stamp.

I am not copying just the password files, might as well do the whole profile as it is just as much of a pain to lose part of it.

Code: Select all

C:
REM My appdata folder
CD \Users\beededea\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles
DIR
REM 0oh0ssyr.third is my profile name
xcopy /s /i /c "0oh0ssyr.third" 0oh0ssyr.third_Archive_%date:~-4,4%%date:~-10,2%%date:~-7,2%_%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%.zip

The result is profile copies date and time stamped
0oh0ssyr.third_Archive_20192201_105105.zip
0oh0ssyr.third_Archive_20192201_111017.zip
0oh0ssyr.third_Archive_20192201_111115.zip

They aren't actually zipped, just folders with the zip extension so I will remember what they are when I come back in the future to look at this folder.

This means my usernames/passwords are safer and I can always revert to a previous version. I will suspect that eclipsed moon caused this and move on now I have a solution in case it occurs again.

[Al6bus]

https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/password-backup-tool/

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Yes that has been mentioned already, scheduled not one-off backups required.

[cartel]

C:\%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\
Paste that into my computer and the folder in there "xxxxxxx.default" contains everything.
Copy it and zip it to a safe location.

Do this once a month and restore it if you need to.

No need for addons and such

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Yes, I just said that four posts above...

[boggydoggy]

I posted yesterday before spotting this post that I was losing all passwords for all sites since upgrading to 28.3. Downgraded to 28.2 and they all came back. Subsequently I upgraded again and they all vanished.

So I am sticking with 28.2 until this gets fixed or there is some other solution that fixes the apparent bug.

Thank you

BD

[doofy]

Note:

Eclipsed Moon has a ghastly "feature" called Smart Erase that, stupidly, is enabled by default. This trashes your history.

So I'd check "Clear History..." settings on the PM Privacy tab. I've not tested it, but I'd be surprised if privacy settings once set by Eclipsed Moon, reverted to default once the extension was removed.

And if one extension does this...