1182805 - saved-telemetry-pings directory still created with Telemetry disabled in Firefox beta 40

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Telemetry, defect, P3)

Description

[msth67]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
Build ID: 20150630154324

Steps to reproduce:

Disabled Telemetry (and Health Report).

user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.cachedClientID", "{}");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.infoURL", "{}");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.previousBuildID", "{}");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.server", "{}");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.server_owner", "{}");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.unified", false);





Actual results:

The directory saved-telemetry-pings is still created inside my profile, containing a plain-text  file with telemetry data.


Expected results:

Having disabled both Telemetry (and Health Report) in every possible way, no data at all should be saved in my profile.

Furthermore, if removing write permission for that directory the following error comes up:

WARNING: A blocker encountered an error while we were waiting.
          Blocker:  Waiting for ping task
          Phase: TelemetryController: Waiting for pending ping activity
          State: (none)

There should be no ping activity if Telemetry has been thoroughly disabled.

Comment 1

[alex_mayorga]

mozillaZine board post that lead to this bug FWIW http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2945477

Comment 2

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

We don't really support setting "toolkit.telemetry.unified;false" on Firefox Desktop.
But we should take a look at what's going on.

Comment 3

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

The important question - do we actually send any data with the following settings:
toolkit.telemetry.enabled;false
datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled;false
toolkit.telemetry.unified;true

Comment 4

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Madalin, could you check whether this still happens with the pref setting from comment 3?
The directory could still get created, but we should never save any pings or send them (could be verified by looking at the directory and checking with gzipServer).

Comment 5

[Madalin Cotetiu]

I have verified the scenario in FF 51 and using latest nightly (54.0a1 (2017-02-13)) Win7 64 bit. I have used the pref settings in comment 3 and even if the saved-telemetry-pings folder is created no pings are recorded in that folder. 

I have used a dirty profile with lot of history and I have observed that after creating the pref settings from comment 3 all the ping recordings from the saved-telemetry-pings folder are deleted. Is that ok?

Also when checking about:healthreport I can see that new ping are still recorded in there (after disabling telemetry there still are ping records displayed in about:healthreport ). (https://www.screencast.com/t/XvOZNJjP) Is that ok?

Comment 6

[Alessio Placitelli [:Dexter]]

(In reply to Madalin Cotetiu from comment #5)
> I have verified the scenario in FF 51 and using latest nightly (54.0a1
> (2017-02-13)) Win7 64 bit. I have used the pref settings in comment 3 and
> even if the saved-telemetry-pings folder is created no pings are recorded in
> that folder. 

Nice, thanks.

> I have used a dirty profile with lot of history and I have observed that
> after creating the pref settings from comment 3 all the ping recordings from
> the saved-telemetry-pings folder are deleted. Is that ok?

Yes, that's expected. When the "uploadEnabled" pref is set to false we delete all the pending pings so we don't send them (to reflect the user choice) [1].

> Also when checking about:healthreport I can see that new ping are still
> recorded in there (after disabling telemetry there still are ping records
> displayed in about:healthreport ). (https://www.screencast.com/t/XvOZNJjP)
> Is that ok?

Yes, because about:healthreport is powered by the ping archive: we write to the archive but never send stuff to Mozilla servers.

[1] - http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/d3307f19d5dac31d7d36fc206b00b686de82eee4/toolkit/components/telemetry/TelemetryController.jsm#883
[2] - http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/d3307f19d5dac31d7d36fc206b00b686de82eee4/toolkit/components/telemetry/TelemetryController.jsm#472

Comment 7

[Alessio Placitelli [:Dexter]]

Please re-open with more details if you can still reproduce this.