1314103 - Sync screwed up my bookmarks

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Clive Walden]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
Build ID: 20160623154057

Steps to reproduce:

Activated sync on my PC, iPad and Nexus 5. Before activating sync only used my PC.


Actual results:

Bookmarks on my PC are completely screwed up. I have Bookmarks Menu nested inside Bookmarks Menu but their contents are not identical. Bookmark folders that were top level have disappeared to somewhere, don't know where. Folders that contained bookmarks are now empty. When I search for bookmarks I can find them BUT it does not tell me where they are in the new hierarchy.


Expected results:

Bookmarks on my PC (designated as Prime Source when setting up sync) should be replicated elsewhere and hierarchy RESPECTED. After that changes should be synced ALWAYS respecting the original hierarchy! If the PC hierarchy can not be respected in other versions it SHOULD NOT affect prime computer.

Comment 1

[Lina Butler [:lina]]

I'm very sorry for the trouble; it's frustrating for sure. There's an entire class of issues where inconsistent or incomplete data causes Sync to destroy the bookmarks hierarchy. Could I trouble you for some additional info? I've ordered these from least to most involved.

1. Do you see any error logs in about:sync-log? It's likely most of them are network errors, but those might hold a clue from around the time you connected your Nexus 5. (Firefox on iOS doesn't upload bookmarks yet, so I suspect it didn't cause the issue).

2. If there aren't any errors, open about:config, change the `services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnSuccess` pref to true, and sync. That should write detailed sync logs. If you don't feel comfortable sharing those (they'll include URLs and titles), no worries. I'm mainly interested if there are orphaned records, or if the de-duping logic has gone wrong.

3. Are there orphans in your bookmarks tree? You can check by exporting your bookmarks to JSON (press Ctrl+Shift+B to open the Library, then click Import and Backup > Backup) and examining the result. Do you see many "sync/parent" references in that file?

4. Firefox 49 has a validator that can compare your bookmarks tree against the server, and report problems. From your user agent, it looks like you're on 47. If you have some time to help us out, you can upgrade to Firefox 49, install the About Sync add-on (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/about-sync/), and check validation results in Tools > About Sync. It can also export anonymized bookmark trees that show the structure, but not the contents.

Comment 2

[Thom Chiovoloni [:tcsc] (ex-moco)]

Closing as incomplete due to no response, but please, feel free to reopen it if you still have the issue and can get back to us with the requested info.