I
Onyx'd my iMac a three days ago.
Then I wondered why my old history had vanished, despite
delete browser history being unchecked in Onyx.
It deleted browser history on
ALL my browsers.
Here's how I finally re-instated the old history, and added my recent history to that.
(Possibly Safari 4/5 and Firefox 2 too, see end of post)
I quit Camino.
Camino history is found in Camino ~/Library/'Application Support'/Camino/history.dat
It only showed a small history.dat file 4mb, for three days.
Highlighting this, I entered
Time Machine, and chose to restore history.dat (32mb) from before Onyx. 3 days ago.
I chose to keep both old and new history. [history (original).dat and history.dat]
(Kept finder window open)
Opened Camino, and it did show my previous 2 months history, up until I Onyx'd, but not since that day.
I quit Camino again.
Renamed the new (older history) history.dat to history 2 months.dat
Renamed history (original).dat to history.dat
Re-opened Camino
History again showed 3 days since Onyx.
Offline, I opened up the history dates menus, 3,000 plus entries. (I RSS a lot !)
I sorted by name, then deleted duplicates. URL's visited several time.
And also webpages I downloaded files or large photo's pages, etc
Selected all, opened in new tabs, it takes a while (657 URL's) and waited until URL's showed in the header. (Takes a while) Page not loaded !! But quicker than doing it online.
"Bookmarked current tabs as TAB group (657 tabs)"
Quite Camino again
Again, renamed the current history.dat to history (original).dat
Renamed history 2 months.dat to history.dat
Re-opened Camino
This again showed my history for the previous 2 months, exc 3 days since Onyx
Then online during my unlimited period, midnight to 4am daily.
I opened 657 bookmarks, ( in groups of 50 say, if necessary) being online, they then became
today's history.
My history is now back up to 13,000 web pages (16,000 before deleting some) for one month browsing.
I had also taken the precaution of saving a copy of the 657 bookmarks, in another bookmark folder as backup.
Plus exporting bookmarks (inc 657) pre re-loading,
Job Done
A bit long winded, and I apologise if I missed any step out.
So, the history is not quite correct date wise, but enables me to do a history search, something I do quite a lot because my memory is better at locating things and items than Camino or google, or even spotlight.
I couldn't get it to work for other browsers, because Time Machine wouldn't let me restore where the old history files are kept, unless you know a way of course, but Camino is my main browser, Safari and Firefox occasionally used when website is not Camino compatible.
UPDATE: It appears to work in Safari too, use following history location.....
Note Firefox 3 and 4 not supported, only Firefox 2, but possibly load using Firefox 2, then open 4 or 5 ?
I never used Firefox 2 so cannot check this out.
Old Version of Firefox for Mac Download - Mac.OldApps.com
Possibly save whole folders containing their respective histories as backup ?
I shall also now copy my history.dat file as backup, (weekly ? ) in case I lose TM, or other reason.
History locations
* Safari ~/Library/Safari/History.plist
~/Library/Safari/HistoryIndex.sk
~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/History
* Camino ~/Library/'Application Support'/Camino/history.dat
* Firefox (version 2.x) ~/Library/'Application Support'/Firefox/Profiles/*.default/history.dat
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