@j3s "just pull the string out of memory, obviously"

@j3s this is delightfully scary

@j3s This is the tech equivalent of "if you lose your wedding ring down the shower drain, you can earn a degree in mechanical engineering with a public infrastructure focus, get a job at the sewage processing plant, strain through the effluent to create a mold to make a new copy of it."

@j3s@merveilles.town oh, wow. What I just saw ​:neofox_surprised:​

@j3s if you're on firefox, there's a Textarea Cache extension.

@j3s Wowsers.

@j3s for Windows users, you can do the same thing but with x64dbg. attach to the process, use the string search function, then resume all threads and detach.

@j3s @zkat Firefox UX keeps getting better 😅

more seriously that’s a very cool trick, I’m sure I’ll get to use it.

@j3s There's something very wrong with the world needing to do that.

@j3s @gsuberland Sudo gdb?

@j3s good lord

@j3s This is amazing, yet terrifying at the same time. I'm definitely using it.

@j3s This is incredible. It feels like the web version of “if someone forgets what you told them: stop time, lay out the last 5 minutes of the timeline into a tesseract, destroy the current timeline, find when you told them the thing inside the tesseract and record what you said, then restart a new timeline at the point where you’re about to tell them a thing, at which point you can play them the recording”

@j3s@merveilles.town does this also work on windows?

@j3s

Easier tip to make sure the website never erases your text (works on almost all browsers!):

1. Type your long text.

2. Type CONTROL-A to select all, then

3. Type almost anything *EXCEPT* CONTROL-C ...

Congratulations! You just erased your text before the website could! Maybe a core dump would help, but maybe not.

For extra fun in step 3 type CONTROL-V.

Hope this helps someone! 🤪

@j3s this is a pretty great trick. I have always grieved, then started over.

@j3s
Cool. Sounds like something I'd have done 20 years ago. 8^)

@j3s though I don't fully understand what this does or the tools used... I can *feel* the cursed vibes radiating off of it >:3

when have you had a website erase text without it being related to a crash/page reload/etc, which I assume this trick does not work on?

@j3s autosave is a rare legitimate use of javascript

@j3s thank you for sharing this! I'd rather do this even if it took twice as long as rewriting whatever I lost 😆

@j3s i understood almost nothing but saved just in case

@j3s

I cannot tell if this will recover my writing or delete my hard drive.

@j3s Thank!

@j3s firefox supposed to hold user inputs whenever user refreshes page, restart their browser.
react ruined it..
I miss good old days

@j3s I've trained myself to <cmd>-<a>,<cmd>-<c> before hitting any buttons on a web site - clipboard managers will then have a copy of your text. Sad I've had to train myself to do this though…

@j3s I've been trying to get into the habit of writing in an external app, and then copying / pasting into the browser.

@j3s @lispi314 Or just use the lowtech way of writing in a text editor first & copy-paste your long posting to the flaky website. Any post that’s taking over a minute to type -> text editor.

@j3s Ty this rules

@j3s nice!
I once did a similar thing, but with my entire hard-drive, after accidentally deleting a project I was working on

@j3s That's a little bit of special story. You basically described how a firefox, the browser I know but for the sake of the story it's an animal, ate your notebook and you go in and ram your hand into it's mouth to retrieve it again. An action which is sometimes illustrated in some cartoons and comics.

@j3s okay now someone in security needs to verify this does not apply to password inputs.

@j3s well fuck me… here I’ve been using the command-hulk-smash keystroke(both fists) whenever something like that happensed. All this time, goddamn coredump could’ve saved me like 2 or 7 laptops over the years.

@j3s
Or use an extension like Form History Control?
@ariasuni

@j3s Or: make a copy of what you write and save it temporarily in a note app until you post the message successfully.

@j3s Your debug fu is strong, but I think, instead of “next time, I’ll use gdb”, I’d go “next time, I’ll use a proper editor first”.

@j3s Just in case, I never write long texts in the browser.

@j3s next time, the website will use madvise(MADV_DONTDUMP), just to be difficult.

@j3s lol I literally just could have used this (but I was lazy and retyped some version of the comment, it wasn't really that long)

@j3s
Or use this addon : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/form-history-control/

@j3s wow, that's hardcore

@j3s I'm saving it to my #orgmode #roam notes.

Yes, this was an advert in disguise. 🤷

@j3s Alternatively,

Ctrl A
Ctrl C
Ctrl End

often.

@j3s https://fosstodon.org/@slink/110955590053429544 🎶 just now strings gcore saved my life 🎶

it was actually `gcore $(pgrep emacs)` and `strings core.*`, but that doesn't match the rhythm of the song.

This was one of the super rare occasions when #emacs would hang with some unsaved code in the undo buffer which I wanted back.
I am so happy to be on a #FOSS Operating Systems which lets me do things (tm).
#c #opensource

@j3s I love this because someone will read it and go down a rabbit hole, eventually leading to then discovering a whole new level of how computers work 💾

@j3s this...but for Chromium web browsers...how do? :blob_gnikniht:

@j3s Have you tried Ctrl-Z 🤔?

@j3s I can also very much recommend the textern extension (https://github.com/jlebon/textern), which allows you to open any text box with an external editor.

@j3s this reminded me of this paper https://people.csail.mit.edu/rinard/paper/ecoop11.pdf

A program got stuck in an infinite loop?
No big deal: attach a debugger, move the program counter past the end of the loop and carry on

@j3s I just started precomposing my longer-form writings on notepad++ off to the side then I copypasta in lol

@j3s
I use the Firefox extension TextArea Cache.

https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/textarea-cache/

@j3s Thank you for the nice Tip. I still prefer to write long texts in a text editor or markdown application, then the problem is mitigated. Or I use something like Cryptpad. But maybe someday I (or someone else I know) will need it.

@j3s@merveilles.town 4. build a habit of composing anything that takes more than a minute or two in a proper editor and copying it over when finished. :)

@j3s@merveilles.town After gcore, can you detach the debugger to resume Firefox instead of killing it (potentially losing other state)?

@j3s I just grep my ram

@j3s it should be possible to do this without killing Firefox (by using 'detach' instead of 'quit' at the gdb prompt?).

I have a vague memory of recovering lost browser text by doing a sudo grep on /dev/mem once.

(Protip: wrap one letter in the grep regexp with [ ] so the regexp will not match itself, I do that all the time I have do a `ps | grep processname`.)

@j3s and you wonder why wizards are grumpy and reluctant to explain why.

@j3s Or https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/form-history-control/ - but where's the fun in that?

@j3s sometimes you can catch it in /dev/kmem or /proc/kcore

@j3s
step 4:
write in a proper text editor and copy /paste
step 5: (optional)
host your own stuff

;)

@j3s "find your lost text in core dump" 😂

@j3s My MO is to continually Select All and Copy when editing any significant amount of copy in a web form.

Been burned too many times over the years it's just muscle memory at this point.

@j3s now we only need a GUI to make that accessible

@j3s don't forget that sometimes you have to search for your text in utf-16 because javascript

@j3s Or install "Form History Control" extension...

@j3s How much text did you lose for it to be worth figuring out how to retrieve it from a core dump?

@j3s good tip. For big things I usually just write them in vim them copy paste, but in the off chance I do one in a browser I'll remember this.

@j3s or just open proc/pid/mem with r2 and search the text. No need for coredumps or ptrace :3

@j3s I just frequently use select all, copy and then paste into a notepad.

@j3s This is beautifully over-engineered… I love it !

@j3s How fast do you have to work before your text is garbage collected/overwritten?

@j3s

@j3s that's why I NEVER, EVER, EVER write anything longer than 2/3 sentences straight into a browser.

I always write it into a text editor and only when I'm done I paste into "the website", whatever that website is.

@j3s There's a variant of this for Windows. Just have some program allocate a large amont of RAM (e.g. 8 Megabytes) and you'll find all of your Netscape Navigator, including passwords and other text in your swap-file.

@j3s as I tend to have too many tabs open and restarting Firefox thus takes too long for my convenience, I*m using the Form History Control plugin. Less fun, I admit, but saves a bit of time.

@j3s
Just install the "Lazarus form recovery" plugin (add-on). 🤷🏻‍♂️

@j3s ... What kind of form on a website would you be writing into for over an hour that you didn't have some ability to save it every once in a while? This is a completely foreign experience to me.

@j3s So it’s lost forever then. Sad 😅

@j3s or you install Form History Control which caches the inputs for you.
@vbabka

@j3s That would work!

Or you could install Form History Control!

Which will autosave form inputs. It has saved my bacon!

(edit: but seriously that's a really clever idea, it would not have occurred to me to attach gdb to recover that. Bookmarked!)

@j3s People should keep this in mind when they agree to send their core dumps in bug reports.

@j3s This works best if the unique string is truly unique and long, like “snickerdoodle” for example. The challenge then becomes how to work the word “snickerdoodle” into your document without disrupting the reading experience.

@j3s tip: you can use doas instead of sudo too!

@j3s https://c.tenor.com/tsrFieuaNhkAAAAM/skittles-nathan-barnatt.gif deep dive 😏

@j3s Yet another reason to use Linux / Unixy OS though there is probably an analogalous but less convenient approach for Windows.

Also, another (preventative) approach is to write the whole thing in Vim first then copy it to the infuriating POS other editor :-)

@j3s depending on the situation ctrl z also works on a text field

@j3s
It should have an extension or a command line program for that.

@j3s can this work for Chrome too?

@j3s might as well make a script to do this

@j3s wonder if the good old lazarus extension is still mantained

@j3s I just developed a habit of randomly copying the text to clipboard, but do it about 99,5% before hitting submit.

@j3s or....

write the Text with a simple Text Editor,

@j3s
I try to train myself to use the GhostText addon¹ for any longer text I write in any browser textarea to avoid having to coredump ;-)

__
¹with emacs or any decent editor doing automatic intermediate (recovery) saves

@j3s
Thank you for that awesome piece of information.

@j3s My low tech approach is to write the text in gedit first 😄

@j3s I just write in a text editor these days. It's easier.