Stored passwords wiped. AGAIN.

[Octopuss]

AGH!!!
This has happened for millionth time and it's doing my head in.
There was never any pattern to it I could find and obviously since all the websites I use keep me logged in, I wouldn't know until I randomly get logged out, cookies expired or whatever, so there's no way to notice when something obscure happens on the browser side.
I know this is not helpful but I don't expect this to be troubleshootable whatsoever, so I guess I am venting more than anything else.

However, has this ever happened to anyone else? I cannot be the only one!

Also, when I go to settings, I see passwords saved for five website (it's obviously been a while since this bug (I assume it must be bug) happened for the last time), but when I check logins.json, there are tens of items saved. 1943 lines damnit.

[Mæstro]

No, this has never happened to me. Pale Moon has reliably kept my passwords safe as long as I have been using it. The save passwords box has always been ticked, but neither automatic completion nor the master password has ever been enabled. Perhaps something toggles the first box by accident.

[Octopuss]

Oh it's not about the checkboxes, those remain the way they should be, but passwords simply dissapear a few times a year (an estimate) under conditions I never managed to figure out.
PM crashes from time to time on me in the instantly disappearing from screen way, after which I have to recover the session (session manager addon is a real ass saver here), but I don't think that's the trigger otherwise I'd notice way more often I guess. And even with the program sometimes crashing, no settings were ever affected.

BUT perhaps Moonchild could have a theory with I see only five sites with saved passwords currently when the logins.json file is huge and references tens of them (that sounds about right what should be there upon extremely short look).

[Mæstro]

Pale Moon has always been stable for me. Your about:support results might help him diagnose.

[billmcct]

I personally think you should be making full backups of your profiles.
However if you just want to backup the passwords go here:

https://github.com/JustOff/password-bac ... l/releases

[Octopuss]

I personally think you should be making full backups of your profiles.

Of course I make them. But that's completely useless when I don't know whether the passwords were wiped yesterday or half a year ago.

[Mæstro]

Again, could you please post your results for about:support? An obscure setting might be to blame, if not some profile corruption which had set in long ago, in which case migrating your profile would help.

[Octopuss]

Sure, here you go.
Application Basics
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But it's no good, I tried starting thread about this long time ago and it never went anywhere (and I tried everything people will likely suggest /while meaning well of course/ I do again in this thread) because of how random the problem is. I have started with a clean profile several times over the past few years, stopped using addons alltogether and other stuff and it always happened again one day.
I guess I could make a reminded to check the stored passwords in the GUI daily and wait months for it to happen...

[Mæstro]

But it's no good, I tried starting thread about this long time ago and it never went anywhere (and I tried everything people will likely suggest /while meaning well of course/ I do again in this thread) because of how random the problem is. I have started with a clean profile several times over the past few years, stopped using addons alltogether and other stuff and it always happened again one day.

This information can help! Describing what you have tried before can help prevent redundant suggestions. Believe me when I say I know how annoying they can be, almost as much as suggestions which misunderstand the problem’s nature and cannot meaningfully be tried. I would not have suggested profile corruption had I known you tried that already, for example.

While we wait for Moonchild or another ‘physician’ to offer his diagnosis, I can continue diagnostic questions as your ‘nurse’. Do you ever clear your browser history or forget sites?

[Octopuss]

Oh I don't remember what I tried, but basically everything people came up with, that's what I meant. There's no way to check whether something helped either because it's a completely random looking problem.
The only potentially interesting information is the file with the passwords seem to contain a LOT more than what's showing in the GUI.

I don't clear history, but I do use Swabby once in a blue moon. Well, I do clear cache sometimes. I also delete the entire "storage" folder once in a long time when I notice it grew to a GB or something insane.
I never heard about the forget site function.

[Moonchild]

A few things to note to possibly narrow this down

• Password management involves mutiple files in your profile, not just logins.json. Most importantly key4.db which holds important cryptographic information for the password manager. Additionally you may still have an old sqlite database (signons.sqlite) which you may want to move out of your profile if present.
• Unexpected browser shutdowns shouldn't affect the password manager unless it happens when it is actually storing a new password entry (new/update). It recovers fine from crashes otherwise even with unclean shutdowns.
• Of course, in case there is filesystem corruption, all bets are off.
• If there is file corruption (json structural errors), I would expect all your passwords to be lost, not just part of them. Losing only part of them and not others is really strange and I have no theory in what situation that could even happen if not deliberate.
• Swabby only touches history/the places database. It does not touch the password manager.
• "Forget about site" is a function of the Permissions manager where you can use one click to remove all data related to a site. This currently includes passwords (but that behaviour will change in v34 after our recent community discussion about that). If you don't know what that is, then you're unlikely to have used it -- unless you have an extension that might call this function in your stead and have removed the passwords as a result.

Side note: I have zero issues with the password manager either, and it goes back... actually a decade without having lost passwords -- I really need to clean up long-since-obsolete entries... some day.

[moonbat]

Very random thought occurred to me - I recall the password database was changed during one of the earlier milestone releases - 28 to 29 or similar - and so if one is upgrading from before that version to a later one, one has to do a point upgrade to this particular version to auto migrate the password database to the new format. Did you ever have to do that, i.e. upgrade Pale Moon from a years out of date version to the latest? I don't think you do, you're fairly regular here and have been upgrading promptly AFAIK. But just putting it out there since as you say everyone's mostly suggested the common workarounds and things to look out for.

[jobbautista9]

The documentation for that NSS database migration from DBM to SQLite can be found here: http://developer.palemoon.org/docs/profile-migration/

[Octopuss]

A few things to note to possibly narrow this down

• Password management involves mutiple files in your profile, not just logins.json. Most importantly key4.db which holds important cryptographic information for the password manager. Additionally you may still have an old sqlite database (signons.sqlite) which you may want to move out of your profile if present.
• Unexpected browser shutdowns shouldn't affect the password manager unless it happens when it is actually storing a new password entry (new/update). It recovers fine from crashes otherwise even with unclean shutdowns.
• Of course, in case there is filesystem corruption, all bets are off.
• If there is file corruption (json structural errors), I would expect all your passwords to be lost, not just part of them. Losing only part of them and not others is really strange and I have no theory in what situation that could even happen if not deliberate.
• Swabby only touches history/the places database. It does not touch the password manager.
• "Forget about site" is a function of the Permissions manager where you can use one click to remove all data related to a site. This currently includes passwords (but that behaviour will change in v34 after our recent community discussion about that). If you don't know what that is, then you're unlikely to have used it -- unless you have an extension that might call this function in your stead and have removed the passwords as a result.

Side note: I have zero issues with the password manager either, and it goes back... actually a decade without having lost passwords -- I really need to clean up long-since-obsolete entries... some day.

Regarding losing parts of passwords, I don't think that's actually true. What most likely happened was passwords were nuked again, and since then I only had to log in to those few sites that are showing in the passwords GUI.
BUT then why is the logins.json file full of saved sites, and also, why is the key4.db 300kB in size? It also has date of 3.1. 2026 on it, implying last change.

Very random thought occurred to me - I recall the password database was changed during one of the earlier milestone releases - 28 to 29 or similar - and so if one is upgrading from before that version to a later one, one has to do a point upgrade to this particular version to auto migrate the password database to the new format. Did you ever have to do that, i.e. upgrade Pale Moon from a years out of date version to the latest? I don't think you do, you're fairly regular here and have been upgrading promptly AFAIK. But just putting it out there since as you say everyone's mostly suggested the common workarounds and things to look out for.

No, I update PM to every new version, usually without even waiting a week or so in case there are bugs.

[Octopuss]

So what ALL files are involved in the password manager?
I guess I'd just like to start fresh.

...or I could just wait for v34 and create a new profile again? But ffs configuring everything from scratch...

edit:
I deleted the key4.db file and it was recreated with the same size despite no passwords were being saved (the json was deleted). What gives?

Kinda unrelated question: I went to history settings, selected everything, chose active logins, ok, restart - and I am still logged into all websites. What?...

[Moonchild]

What most likely happened was passwords were nuked again, and since then I only had to log in to those few sites that are showing in the passwords GUI.

My point is that if all your passwords are nuked, the passwords GUI would not show anything, nor would it offer to fill in passwords for you (because obviously it would no longer have the data).

why is the key4.db 300kB in size?
...
I deleted the key4.db file and it was recreated with the same size despite no passwords were being saved (the json was deleted). What gives?

Databases are normally created with a minimal size and pre-allocated table space. You'll have to ask the NSS folks as to why this was chosen. Pale Moon/UXP hands off the encryption to NSS. The json is deleted in case of key db nukage because it's not possible to decrypt the data without it, and you're starting fresh.

Kinda unrelated question: I went to history settings, selected everything, chose active logins, ok, restart - and I am still logged into all websites. What?...

"active logins" isn't what you think it is. Most websites use cookies or local storage to keep you logged in.
Clearing the "active login" history will log you out of web sites that use one of the HTTP authentication methods (e.g. HTTP basic auth, as is used on for example the phoebus panel, or other things like SCRAM, NTLM or Digest-based) for user login. "Active logins" basically refers to the browsers temporary credentials cache, which is used in these cases. These methods do not use cookies for authentication.
Clearing the "cookie" history will log you out of web sites that use a cookie based authentication method for user logins. The "cookie" history refers to permanent as well as session based cookies. Session cookies provide (among other things) methods for handling user logins, that are not based on HTTP authentication.

[Octopuss]

What most likely happened was passwords were nuked again, and since then I only had to log in to those few sites that are showing in the passwords GUI.

My point is that if all your passwords are nuked, the passwords GUI would not show anything, nor would it offer to fill in passwords for you (because obviously it would no longer have the data).

Oh but I never said any passwords were offered to be filled.
This is a misunderstanding.

Let me try again in a different way:
I think passwords were nuked somewhat recently, but I have since then logged back into a few website (without being aware it happened again; I mean I visit a lot of websites), which must be what's currently in the GUI.
When PM doesn't fill in a password for me (not sure how others do it, I just click into username field, it usually shows up, then I press tab to get to password, and then PM usually fills it), I typically don't think anything of it and and simply use the Keepass's keyboard shortcut instead, because I THINK some websites are like that. Of course, this very well might be a first manifestation of the bug/problem I am talking about.

[Moonchild]

I think passwords were nuked somewhat recently, but I have since then logged back into a few website (without being aware it happened again; I mean I visit a lot of websites), which must be what's currently in the GUI.

But you'd have to confirm in that case that you want to (re-)store the password, when you fill it in. That would immediately be an indicator that the password was no longer present. That doesn't happen automatically/silently.

simply use the Keepass's keyboard shortcut instead

Hmm. I don't really know how Keepass integrates with Pale Moon; maybe that could be part of the problem?

[Octopuss]

But you'd have to confirm in that case that you want to (re-)store the password, when you fill it in. That would immediately be an indicator that the password was no longer present. That doesn't happen automatically/silently.

Yes, of course that's what I did! I thought it was pretty obvious.
Like I said, when this happens once in a few months, you don't think anything of being asked to save a password. It's when you realize you've done it for the fifth time this month (I believe cookies do eventually expire and you have to log back at some point?) on a website you regularly use you think "Aha! It's this shit again!"

[Moonchild]

Yes, of course that's what I did! I thought it was pretty obvious.

It wasn't

you don't think anything of being asked to save a password.

Well, you should. It would be an immediate red flag that something happened to your password store. Knowing when that happened would likely allow you to get closer to a why it happens. e.g. by having relatively recent steps, changes or incidents being still fresh.