1005673 - Sync does not work If the browser is stored on the external SD card

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Android Sync, defect)

Description

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

My android phone (HTC One m8) has internal storage and external SD storage. 
I often move apps to external SD card whenever possible 

After I updated my browser to 29, I tried to sign in to the new Sync but I could not. The browser would say cannot sign in without further indication of what's next

So I played around and moved the browser back to internal storage, then when I tried again, sync works. 

Btw, I noticed that when the browser is stored in external SD card, when you try to add an account in "Account & sync", Firefox browser does not show up on the list. Once the browser is moved back to internal storage, Firefox account option shows up in "Account & Sync". So I suspect this may be the root cause

Comment 1

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

mcomella tested this in Bug 957894 (on Nexus devices), so it's a surprise that you're seeing problems.

Your last paragraph implies that Android is at fault -- apps stored on the SD card should work just as they do when on internal storage.

For the historical record we're going somewhat against guidelines by allowing you to move to SD card, because Firefox is full of things like:

---
Services
    Your running Service will be killed and will not be restarted when external storage is remounted. You can, however, register for the ACTION_EXTERNAL_APPLICATIONS_AVAILABLE broadcast Intent, which will notify your application when applications installed on external storage have become available to the system again. At which time, you can restart your Service.
Alarm Services
    Your alarms registered with AlarmManager will be cancelled. You must manually re-register any alarms when external storage is remounted.
...
Account Managers
    Your accounts created with AccountManager will disappear until external storage is remounted.
Sync Adapters
    Your AbstractThreadedSyncAdapter and all its sync functionality will not work until external storage is remounted.

...

If your application uses any of the features listed above, you should not allow your application to install on external storage.
---

Can you supply an adb log during repro?

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

(In reply to Richard Newman [:rnewman] from comment #1)
> mcomella tested this in Bug 957894 (on Nexus devices),

I tested this on a Galaxy S4 as my Nexus devices do not have SD card slots.

> so it's a surprise that you're seeing problems.

My focus was (incorrectly) not on ensuring you can create an account when the device was installed on the sdcard, but rather that the move and SD card ejection happened correctly.

However, I just tried creating an account with the browser installed on the SD card on my Galaxy S4 and everything worked correctly.

Joe, do you have specific steps to reproduce?

Comment 3

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

hi Sorina,
this is a pretty old bug and I wonder if you can help reproducing this and see if this is still a problem on the latest builds?
Thanks

Comment 4

[Sorina Florean [:sflorean]]

Hello,

Tested with HTC Desire 820 (Android 6.0.1) and Huawei MediaPad M2 (Android 5.1.1) and wasn't able to reproduce this issue on latest Nightly (54.0a1 - 2017-02-05). I was able to create an account and also, sign in with an known account and perform a sync with desktop.

Comment 5

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Thanks for testing!