1038361 - "Telemetry" and "Firefox Health Report" should be disabled by default

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Alice0775 White]

"Telemetry" and "Firefox Health Report" are enabled by default in Firefox31beta.
And "Firefox Health Report" causes a lot of shutdown crash(Bug 944873, Bug 1037826).

So, I think that to prevent unexpected shutdown crash, "Telemetry" and "Firefox Health Report" should be disabled by default in Firefox31beta until fixed the crash.

Comment 1

[Robert Kaiser]

For one thing, telemetry is off in release anyhow.
For the other, Firefox Health Report has nothing to do with the crashes.

Third, it's experiments that are triggering the shutdown crashes, not all of telemetry, there is no use in killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
Fourth, no experiments would run on release anyhow, this is confined to beta.
Fifth, the experiments have already been reduced, they were only planned for en-US but had wrongly been rolled out to all locales and that has been corrected and rduced the amount of crashes.
Sixth, the crashes only happen after shutting Firefox down when that process is taking too long, so they are not disturbing normal browser usage.
Sixth, the team is working on fixing the crashes themselves, that work is happening in bug 1012924.

All in all, no reasons to actually disable those two features here. We have discussed this topic quite thoroughly at the end of last week.

But thanks for taking care about the issue!

Comment 2

[Alice0775 White]

I think "Firefox Health Report" has not any merit for user.
Only has a demerit such as crash.

So, I think these experiments should be off by default in release build.
Otherwise, Release Note should mention these cause crash.

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Experiments are controlled by the telemetry controls. Telemetry is off by default on the release channel, and on by default on all the prerelease channels, including beta.

We believe that the increase in crashes related to experiments is fixed by bug 1014187.

Firefox Health Report is on by default in all builds by design, and is a critical part of projects this year to improve user support in various situations.

Comment 4

[Alice0775 White]

What about release note?
I think that one preventing crash is more important than "Firefox Health Report".

When will bug 1014187 show an effect?
Actually, Firefox 31b9 always crashes.

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Alice, if you are experiencing a specific crash with b9, please file it and cc me. I need to see the crash reports and then perhaps follow up with you to get some more detailed logging data. We know that some users are affected by 1014187 but I don't have good data on what's happening and we haven't had somebody reproduce it locally before you.

Comment 6

[Robert Kaiser]

(In reply to Alice0775 White from comment #2)
> I think "Firefox Health Report" has not any merit for user.

It actually has. The data we record with it is vital to improving Firefox user experience and create baselines values on the basis of which we will directly show tips about issues to users based on comparing their specific values to baseline values and known trouble points.

Comment 7

[Alice0775 White]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] Away 19-July through 3-Aug from comment #5)
> Alice, if you are experiencing a specific crash with b9, please file it and
> cc me. I need to see the crash reports and then perhaps follow up with you
> to get some more detailed logging data. We know that some users are affected
> by 1014187 but I don't have good data on what's happening and we haven't had
> somebody reproduce it locally before you.

I had already filed Bug 1037826, but a dev dup(ignored) and too late.
However, fixing the bug is worth for ESR31.