1440422 - Enable Android Auto Backup

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, enhancement, P1)

Description

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

This was originally disabled in bug 1190375 to unblock upgrading to API 23 and it does not appear that we've followed up on it.

This was requested via email:

We’ve discovered a bug specific to your application running on the Android O build. Please see the following details:

Application name: “Firefox Browser fast & private (org.mozilla.firefox)”

Steps to reproduce the issue:

    Install “Firefox Browser fast & private” and login into the app.

    Toggle on “Tab queue” from “General” tab.

    Initiate backup of your app by running “adb shell bmgr backupnow org.mozilla.firefox”

    Setup a new device and select “Copy your data”.

    Restore new device using old Android phone through cable or cloud storage.


Observed Result(s): App is not in logged state on the new device and app settings are not restored after restore. “Tab queue” is in “off” state on the restored device.

Expected Result(s): App settings should be restored.

Possible Root Cause(s): Auto Backup is disabled by app.

Recommendation(s):

We suggest the following features to be implemented by your app:

    Account transfer or Smart Lock API for login.

    Auto backup to save setting preferences.

    Sync preferences in cloud.


Please refer to the following documents for details:

Restoring User Data: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup.html

Auto backup to save setting preferences:https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/autobackup.html

Sync preferences with Key/Value Backup: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/keyvaluebackup.html

Account transfer: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/account-transfer.html 

Google Smart Lock: https://developers.google.com/identity/smartlock-passwords/android/

Please respond directly to this email if you have any specific questions related to this issue.  We’re happy to provide further technical assistance to ensure your application is compatible on O.

If you discover an issue with any versions of Android, please report it to us in the AOSP issue tracker.

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

For the auto backup introduced in Marshmallow, I don't think we'd be able to use the XML-based black/-white lists, because those don't support wildcard or regex syntax (https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/autobackup.html#XMLSyntax) and in our case
- our profile-specific shared preferences file name depends on the profile name (we could fake that by only caring about the main profile and assuming that this will always be called "default")
- the path of our profile directory and therefore any files therein is salted (there's no workaround for this)

So it looks like we'd have to write our own custom BackupAgent, respectively at least BackupAgentHelper (https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/keyvaluebackup.html#BackupAgentHelper) instead, so we could access our profile handling and determine the correct paths for the files we wish to backup.

Comment 2

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Specific things to pay attention to: we would like the restored device to know its Firefox Account, but to require signing in again. We would like it to have a different FxA device ID _unless it's the same physical device_, and it should have a different Sync client ID. The Sync clients table should be cleared.

Comment 3

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Do we want to send unencrypted user profile data to Google servers?

Comment 4

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

The mailing list discussion from 2015 is well worth a read:

https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/mobile-firefox-dev/2015-October/001541.html

The 25MB limit, plus privacy concerns, imply that _at most_ we'd want to synchronize preferences and a few settings, rather than browser data.

N.B., users can turn off backup and restore, or they can do local-only backups. It's not necessarily the case that all users will have their data dumped in Google Drive.

Comment 5

[Andreas Bovens [:abovens]]

If user wants to transfer their data (bookmarks, etc.) from one install to another, I'd say we should recommend them to use sync instead. Is that an option?

Comment 6

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

It's better than nothing and actually works relatively well for the things for which it works, but it doesn't transfer everything, e.g. the full session history of your tabs, settings, addons (and their settings in turn), search engines...

Comment 7

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Marking this P1 since we are replacing the whiteboard tags with Priority labels for consistency in triage.

Comment 8

[Petru-Mugurel Lingurar [:petru]]

In bug 1190375 Sebastian wanted to gather a list of things we should or should not backup but that ultimately ended with disabling backup altogether because of security concerns and too much work needed to identify and separate what should be backed up and making sure this would not cause any regressions.

The discussion went over a mailing list [1] and there was suggested, as here also, that we should direct users to FxA and Firefox Sync.

After disabling Auto Backup most complaints were about the impossibility to use `adb backup` [2] or revolved around restoring previously opened tabs [3].

Sync already allows getting all tabs, bookmarks, logins and history. And this is also what Chrome seems to be doing.
(Although it also allows backup but I wasn't able to read it after `adb backup`)

As per the previous discussions enabling auto backup could bring issues with user accounts [4] and preferences [5] and again raise some security concerns but other than that, what Jan sugggested, tab history, addons, search engines I think is doable.
And maybe even the rest.

NI-ing Susheel to assess this feature's importance.

[1] https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/mobile-firefox-dev/2015-October/001541.html
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1297435#c3
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1190375#c12
[4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185920#c0
[5] https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/mobile-firefox-dev/2015-October/001543.html

Comment 9

[:sdaswani]

Andreas should we punt on this and just advise sync or should we work on it?

Comment 10

[Andreas Bovens [:abovens]]

I'd say we advise users to just use sync instead of Android auto backup.

Comment 11

[Petru-Mugurel Lingurar [:petru]]

Based on the initial discussion in the mailing list, current limitations and concerns and Product's advice I'm closing this as WONTFIX.