View source for Rescuing your Chrome history

'''[[Dankblog|dankblog!]] 2026-05-25, 2201 EDT, at [[Viewpoint|the danktower]]'''

has it really been over a year since i blogged here? sheesh.

for going on a decade at least, Chrome (at least the [[Debian|debianized]] "Chromium" builds i run) has serious problems if your filesystem fills up (the filesystem holding the relevant <tt>User Data/</tt> subdirectory, to be precise). foremost among these issues is that the next pageload results in a corrupted history database <i>in memory and on disk</i>, meaning your history becomes null ("what?" you ask. "how can it corrupt the database on disk if the disk is full?" that's a great question, one to which i'd like to know the answer. obviously it's editing something in-place, or reserved some space, but it definitely happens.) visited sites can't be seen, and new loads aren't recorded. this seems a pretty substantial bug, but i guess no PM in mountain view gives a shit. so it goes. i have no insight into the mysteries of Chrome development planning.

if you close chrome and start it again following this corruption, the database (<tt>History</tt> in the user folder) is helpfully recreated from scratch, aka permanently lost. this is not usually what you want.

if you notice the problem has occurred (you'll typically get a "you need to free up space!" message in Chrome), take the following steps:

# change to the relevant subdirectory of <tt>User Data/</tt>, usually <tt>Default</tt>
# run <tt>sqlite3 History .recover > /tmp/chrome-history.sql</tt>
# close running Chrome processes
# clean up necessary space, you disgusting hoarder
# run <tt>sqlite3 /tmp/chrome-history < /tmp/chrome-history.sql</tt>
# run <tt>mv /tmp/chrome-history History</tt>
# run <tt>rm /tmp/chrome-history.sql</tt>
# start Chrome

you ought have the vast majority of your history. obviously you can and should replace the hardcoded filenames with <tt>mktemp</tt> invocations. you ought write them to a directory that is not world-readable, unless you don't mind people being able to read your browser history.

'''previously: "[[GT2025|GT2025]]" 2025-04-17'''

[[Category:Blog]]