FINAL Files

[John McGaw]

Tried to post this yesterday but it didn't "take". Well, that didn't
work from TB so now I'll use Gravity and see what happens. No idea what
is going on with that.

========================================================

I believe I posted asking about this before but can't recall ever
getting any usable answers. What I have is huge numbers of files with
the extension .final showing up in my ..\appdata\roaming\firefox
\profiles\[random junk].default directory. Names of the files appear to
be random too like {c424e94f-70f4-4d1b-a010-dfed2ca5b4a8}.final. They
can be anywhere from 2k to 200k+ and never seem to go away unless I
manually erase them which I do before doing backups to avoid thrashing
slowing the process down. Erasing them seems to harm nothing, even if FF
is running. I have 238 of these files dating back to 8/29 as I write
this.

This is not a killer problem but I have always believed that programs
should be neat and clean up after themselves and this clutter seems to
serve no purpose. Is this something I should go through the bug process
with, assuming I can figure it out?

Any ideas?

[Big Al]

I have a large number of .final files in a storage/default folder in my
profile. All in a folder https+++weather.com

I visit a lot of weather maps like Accuweather and Weather.com but until
you mentioned it, I never noticed them.
I'll probably add them to my batch file that trashes temp files.


Al.

[Big Al]

On 9/7/19 10:32 AM, John McGaw wrote:
>
>

I just deleted that weather.com folder (made a zip backup) and firefox
will start but won't display any web page, just brings up a blank and
the throbber keeps running. Even restoring the file it won't bring up
a page.

I had to restore the entire profile from a backup to get it to work.

Al

[John McGaw]

Dunno. I don't have any files in that sort of location but I know that
deleting the FINAL files in the location I named seems to do no harm and
everything starts fine. I've even deleted them while FF was running with no
obvious problems. Weird.

BTW: just checked again and I have accrued 158 files in that location and
discovered the largest one yet at 433kB. I deleted all of them with FF
running and then searched for them again and found 28 new ones, this
running FF with 39 (or thereabouts) open tabs. Deleted all of them again,
FF still running, and none seem to show up afterward. It is all beyond me.
If I was 20 years younger I might try to get the source code and find out
what these annoying files are doing and why they aren't being cleaned up...

[Paul in Houston, TX]

Sounds like your comp has ransomware that is not working quite right
....at the moment.

[Ken Whiton]

*-* On Sat, 7 Sep 2019, at 10:32:58 -0400,
*-* In Article
<mailman.400.156786678...@lists.mozilla.org>,
*-* John McGaw wrote
*-* About FINAL Files

> Tried to post this yesterday but it didn't "take". Well, that didn't
> work from TB so now I'll use Gravity and see what happens. No idea
> what is going on with that.

Both of your prior posts on this subject appeared in this
newsgroup on Usenet, but not on Mozilla, because you posted them to
the Easynews server instead of to the Mozilla server.

Ken Whiton
--
FIDO: 1:132/152
InterNet: kenw...@surfglobal.net.INVAL (remove the obvious to reply)

[John McGaw]

On 9/8/2019 3:52 AM, Ken Whiton wrote:
> *-* On Sat, 7 Sep 2019, at 10:32:58 -0400,
> *-* In Article
> <mailman.400.156786678...@lists.mozilla.org>,
> *-* John McGaw wrote
> *-* About FINAL Files
>
>> Tried to post this yesterday but it didn't "take". Well, that didn't
>> work from TB so now I'll use Gravity and see what happens. No idea
>> what is going on with that.
>
>      Both of your prior posts on this subject appeared in this
> newsgroup on Usenet, but not on Mozilla, because you posted them to
> the Easynews server instead of to the Mozilla server.
>
>                                         Ken Whiton

Curiouser and curioser...

I definitely was in new.mozilla.org when I wrote and posted and I gave the
destination in TB as the newsgroup mozilla.support.firefox and the message
_went_ with no errors reported. Clearly something odd is going on or I
simply don't understand the process even after all of these years. But
thanks for the information and, until I figure it out, I'll originate
messages in Gravity but reply in TB since that does seem to work.

[John McGaw]

One further clue, FWIW: all of the subject files are compressed using the
Snappy library functions. I finally saw the commonality when I looked at
the raw files and saw the string "sNaPpY" at offset 05 in the header of
each of them. I should have done the hex dump sooner. Now I'm looking for a
stand-alone Snappy decompressor so that I can see the actual contents of
the files. Since the compression is usually a function coded into program
source, there seem to be no stand-alone apps to do the job; or at least I
haven't found any yet. I'm still sure that it is FF compressing and caching
the files although I don't know why it would bother or why it wouldn't
clean up the mess afterward.

[Paul in Houston, TX]

Your comp is infected with the STOP encryption virus.

[John McGaw]

You sure seem fixated on that. If so, this is the most ill-conceived virus
ever, given that it is "encrypting" only throw-away files in the cache area
of a single program and then not making any demands.

[Paul in Houston, TX]

Yup. It did not install correctly.