recovering text from ff

Got this tip from j3s from their blog. (This can also be used in cases eg. you got kicked out of a group and now you lost all access to it) Think you could also do this from browser dev tools.

1. find the firefox pid

  pgrep -l firefox

2. attach gdb to firefox and dump its core

  sudo gdb -p <pid>
  gcore firefox.dump
  <this takes awhile>
  exit

3. find your lost text in the coredump

  strings firefox.dump | grep 'phrase-from-your-text'

4. remove coredump

  rm firefox.dump

that's it! text recovered. 😎

Link to original post: https://j3s.sh/thought/recover-lost-text-by-coredumping-firefox.html