1493262 - Snippet does not appear on my Activity stream even though it's turned on in my preferences

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P3)

Description

[Lauren Niolet]

For some time now, I haven't seen snippet on the new tab page. But in my settings, Snippet is an always has been activated.

I am hoping to troubleshoot this and understand why it's happening in case this affects more users than just me. I am not sure what information would be helpful to diagnose, but am happy to provide whatever would help.

Comment 1

[Lauren Niolet]

Attachment: Snippet settings

This is my snippet settings. I've turned it off and on in the past, left it on restarted, all the things.

Comment 2

[Lauren Niolet]

Attachment: Activity stream page

My activity stream page. There is not now and has not been for a LONG time any snippet content on this page.

Comment 3

[Kate Hudson :k88hudson]

Snippets aren't expected to show up all the time, but if you haven't seen anything in a long time that might be a problem. Any chance you see any errors logged in your developer console when you load about:newtab?

Comment 4

[Lauren Niolet]

Attachment: error log.png

I don't think I've seen a snippet for months. Here are some errors. If these aren't the ones you need, let me know, please.

Comment 5

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Line 5645 does match up with a console.error from snippets.js SnippetsProvider.init calling await this.snippetsMap.connect();:

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/file/2a7133445b5e/browser/extensions/activity-stream/data/content/activity-stream.bundle.js#l5645

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/blob/2076b6d27823afbdeef4abcfc0efe79a40acd13b/content-src/lib/snippets.js#L325-L330

Could it be indexedDB is in a broken state?

Lauren, could you try visiting https://firefox-storage-test.glitch.me/ and does everything show up green "Good: Totally Working. (fullyOperational)" ?

Comment 6

[Lauren Niolet]

Attachment: Screenshot_2018-10-04 Firefox Storage Test.png

This looks like it would be relevant. . .

Comment 7

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

asuth, could you interpret attachment 9014523 [details] and provide any fixes / workaround for the reporter? Or if it would be useful to try to get the broken files?

LocalStorage Good: Totally Working. (fullyOperational)
QuotaManager Bad: Totally Broken. (fullyBroken)
IndexedDB Bad: Totally Broken. (fullyBroken)
Cache API Bad: Totally Broken. (fullyBroken)

Comment 8

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

Unfortunately, QuotaManager is broken in the profile.  https://wiki.mozilla.org/DOM/Workers-Storage/projects/WSIF tracks our overall effort to permanently address this scenario automatically.

To fix an affected user's profile, the quick options are:
- Refresh the profile.  This migrates cookies and history and passwords and such but leaves a lot of junk behind.  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings has the magic button to push plus additional documentation.  (This is the mechanism Firefox may suggest on its own if you haven't used a profile for a while.)
- As a more targeted fix if there are concerns about the data that will be lost, removing the directory PROFILE/storage and the file PROFILE/storage.sqlite if they exist (while Firefox is not running!)  Opening about:profiles can help with locating the profile directory.  There is some documentation on it and the profile manager at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles.

Comment 9

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

Also, there's no need to provide the broken profile, although the offer is appreciated.

Comment 10

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Looks like we'll need a fix related to War on Storage Initialization Failures guessing bug 944918.

Comment 11

[Graham Perrin]

(In reply to Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] from comment #8)

> - As a more targeted fix if there are concerns about the data that will be
> lost, removing the directory PROFILE/storage and the file
> PROFILE/storage.sqlite if they exist (while Firefox is not running!) …

'Bad: Totally Broken. (fullyBroken)' can appear for QuotaManager if there's simply a file where it's not wanted. 

For example (not the best example): 

PROFILE/storage/default/thumbs.db

Comment 12

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

(In reply to Graham Perrin from comment #11)
> PROFILE/storage/default/thumbs.db

Thanks for raising this file type!  I've added it to be added to the white-list of files that we shouldn't freak out about over in the part 1 patch on bug 1423917.

Comment 13

[Jean Collings]

(In reply to Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] from comment #12)
> (In reply to Graham Perrin from comment #11)
> > PROFILE/storage/default/thumbs.db
> 
> Thanks for raising this file type!  I've added it to be added to the
> white-list of files that we shouldn't freak out about over in the part 1
> patch on bug 1423917.

Can you please help confirm when this would get fixed? My concern is that there are a lot of broken profiles that do not see snippets. Unless broken profiles are more of a rare case? Please let me know and thanks!

Comment 14

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

https://wiki.mozilla.org/DOM/Workers-Storage/projects/WSIF tracks the overall effort.  This class of problem should have fixes landed during the now-current Firefox 66 release cycle.