Element/pattern files stopped updating ??

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cjsmall
Posts: 53
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:54 pm

Element/pattern files stopped updating ??

Post by cjsmall »

Firefox 53.0.3
AdBlock Plus 2.9
Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus 1.4
Xubuntu 17.04

As of a couple weeks ago, whenever I select and block a new item on a page, it disappears as expected. However, I've noticed that the elemhide.css and patterns.ini files located in the ~/.mozilla/firefox/<...>.default/adblockplus directory have stopped updating! In the past, every time a new element was blocked these files were updated, but now they remain unchanged. Has something changed in how the filters are being stored or is there an upper limit on the size of these files? Here is what I currently see:

4157982 Jun 2 08:46 elemhide.css
7293719 Jun 2 08:46 patterns.ini


These have today's date because I tried restoring them from backup to see if that would change anything. However, after stopping and restarting Firefox and then blocking a new element, these files remain unchanged.

On various sites, I'm also starting to see other blocked elements no longer being filtered.

Any idea on what might be happening? Thanks.
cjsmall
Posts: 53
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:54 pm

Re: Element/pattern files stopped updating ??

Post by cjsmall »

Great! Thanks, mapx, for the info in the new data location. Much appreciated.
cjsmall
Posts: 53
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:54 pm

Re: Element/pattern files stopped updating ??

Post by cjsmall »

Follow up question:

This morning I looked at my storage.js file compared to a backup that I made last night and see that the size of the file has been reduced from 27719778 to 22973756 bytes, despite my adding a number of new elements to be blocked. I previously saw smaller size reductions in the elemhide.css and patterns.ini files. Is this reduction in size due to some sort of periodic repacking of storage.js, or does it indicate that I've lost some of my element definitions?

I'm making the backups because I find that often when Firefox updates itself, it has lost all the existing ABP definitions and that they need to be manually restored. I'd like to better understand what is happening with the new data storage. Thanks.

P.S.: I notices that overnight it dropped again in size to 18181243. That's quite a reduction considering a number of elements have continued to be added.
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