652519 - Firefox 4 sync mechanism creates many duplicates and moves folders, duplicate folders, duplicate links, same folders with split content

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[4art]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

Following problems when using FF sync between two machines:
- folders are duplicated, partly with same content, partly original content is split between the new folders
- duplicate links are created
- many duplicates below "no title"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. have many links (e.g 2000)
2. activate sync
3. look after a while (few days/weeks, problem seems to get worse with time)

Actual Results:  
see details

Expected Results:  
sync does work like "sync" and not randomly screws up bookmarks

Comment 1

[4art]

set to major, but bookmark loss could happen due to weird restructuring

Comment 2

[[not reading bugmail]]

I ran sync on another profile from a previous profile and I also saw duplicated or triplicated folders on my bookmarks. Some folders and bookmarks were there several times like 10 or 20.. and some of those folders were just empty.

Comment 3

[[not reading bugmail]]

I can confirm it but not sure if there are STR.  I have since fixed my bookmarks.

Comment 4

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

In order to investigate, we need either or both of:

* Sync logs starting prior to observed problems, and continuing to after observing them

* Steps to reproduce.

Can you provide either of those?

Thanks!

Comment 5

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

4art, are you still seeing this problem? If so, can you provide us with logs as Richard suggested? Thanks!

Comment 6

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

Please provide requested information if you are able to reproduce with latest builds. If so, reopen the bug.

Comment 7

[hans]

I was just hit with this problem last night after pairing Firefox 13 on a new Windows 7 install (which could just be a coincidence - I already had Firefox on Win7 paired up from before I reinstalled it), so far the duplicated folders have shown up on a Linux and OS X box, and it seems for some folders its duplicate is empty, for others some bookmarks have been either moved or duplicated (I've seen both happen) into the duplicate folder. This seems to affect only folders directly under "Bookmarks Menu" (I have no bookmarks under the Toolbar/Unsorted root folders), and not any folders at deeper levels.

One curious thing is that I have a folder named like "Foo / bar / baz", and its duplicate was named simply "Foo".

Unfortunately I have no sync logs from the moment before this issue started, but I think I may have another machine still that I haven't booted since this issue started appearing, if I manage to get a log from there I will attach it here.

On my Linux box where the issue has already started showing up, I looked under ~/.mozilla/firefox/<my_default_profile_dir>/weave/logs, and no errors are shown for this issue (the last one was from June 8 which was just a connectivity issue), though I'm not sure if these are the correct logs I should be looking at.

Comment 8

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to hans from comment #7)

> One curious thing is that I have a folder named like "Foo / bar / baz", and
> its duplicate was named simply "Foo".

Did you *ever* have a folder named "Foo"?

> On my Linux box where the issue has already started showing up, I looked
> under ~/.mozilla/firefox/<my_default_profile_dir>/weave/logs, and no errors
> are shown for this issue (the last one was from June 8 which was just a
> connectivity issue), though I'm not sure if these are the correct logs I
> should be looking at.

Sync will only write logs if an error occurs. This isn't an error, so you'd need to set logOnSuccess to true.

https://philikon.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/how-to-file-a-good-sync-bug/