1523408 - browser console perf warning noticed at startup

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P1)

Description

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I'm guessing this affects both activity stream and discovery stream:

Warning: attempting to write 5837 bytes to preference browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions. This is bad for general performance and memory usage. Such an amount of data should rather be written to an external file. This preference will not be sent to any content processes.

Comment 1

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

I can reproduce this.

1. Set Discovery Stream pref "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.config" to "{"enabled":true,"show_spocs":true,"layout_endpoint":"https://getpocket.com/v3/newtab/layout?version=1&consumer_key=40249-e88c401e1b1f2242d9e441c4&layout_variant=basic" }"
2. Load a new tab.
3. Refresh that new tab.
4. Check and note browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions
5. Refresh that tab again.
6. Check and note browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions again.
7. repeat steps 5-6.

Expected: browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions should cap out and stop growing at 3 impressions.
Actual: browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions keeps growing bigger and bigger the more you refresh.

Comment 2

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/pull/4747

Comment 3

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]:

Comment 4

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

Is there anything you need me to do? I can track this for 66 and make sure to follow up to see that it lands. At this point, you will need to request uplift to beta.

Comment 5

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

@lizzard, I'm not sure, but I think we're good? I just pushed up an update to the patch, so once that lands in github/nightly, I can start the uplift process.

Comment 6

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a4a56d03930a

Comment 7

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

I'm trying to reproduce issue but can't figure out how and where exactly should I check step 4 "Check and note browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions".

Could you please clarify this to me?
Thanks.

Comment 8

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

It's fixed on nightly, and I don't think the issue is present on release.

It might be there on beta, so I bet beta is the best place to start trying to reproduce the original issue.

Comment 9

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

I get that it's fixed on the Nightly now, but I tried to reproduce it on a Nightly build from January 28 and also on Firefox 66.0b6.

What I wanted to know is where should I look for/where should it be displayed "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions"?

Comment 10

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

I'm not sure if this helps, but I'll try to just break down that step a bit more, hopefully helps :)

4.a. Open about:config in a new tab.
4.b. Search for the pref browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions
4.c. Take note of the value in that pref, specifically the length, it should be something along the lines of: {"786":[1549640147446,1549640147635,1549640149830,1549640149969],"1256":[1549637509386,1549637529656,1549637529798,1549637530066,1549637530231]} but your numbers may vary.

6.a Check the pref value in step 4.c again, it should be larger now.

Does that help a bit?

Comment 11

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

Thanks for the details.

But the thing is that I'm not able to see this pref "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions" in about:config and I don't know why, even after I set Discovery Stream pref "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.config" to "{"enabled":true,"show_spocs":true,"layout_endpoint":"https://getpocket.com/v3/newtab/layout?version=1&consumer_key=40249-e88c401e1b1f2242d9e441c4&layout_variant=basic" }"

I tried on Nightly 66.0a1 (2019-01-27) and on Firefox 66.0b6.

The only three pref's that could be related to the one mentioned are these:
"browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories"
"browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.options"
"services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories"

Is there any thing extra I should do to be able to see this pref "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions"?

Thanks.

Comment 12

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

Maybe you somehow have spocs disabled? If it's a new profile though, I don't see how that would be possible.

To double check, look for the pref "showSponsored"

Comment 13

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

I can verify this if it's easier.

Comment 14

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

"browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored" pref is set to "true" so my guess is that it's not disabled.

Could you please verify this bug?
Thanks.

Comment 15

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

Ohhhh, I wonder if it's a locale thing, as I think we only ship spocs to en-US!

Comment 16

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

I also tried to connect to US VPN and to change "browser.search.region" pref to "US", but that didn't help.
I'm not able to see this pref "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories.spoc.impressions" in about:config.

Do you have any other suggestions how to do that?

Comment 17

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

Actually I finally managed to reproduce it on Nightly 67.0a1 (2019-01-28).

Verified as fixed on Firefox Nightly 67.0a1 (2019-02-13) on Windows 10 x 64, Mac OS X 10.14 and on Ubuntu 16.04 x64.

Comment 18

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

Can you request uplift? Thanks.

Comment 19

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

I wonder if we're fine on this now and no longer require an uplift. Previously we needed this because both discovery and activity stream were using the TELEMETRY_IMPRESSION_STATS event, now discovery stream is using DISCOVERY_STREAM_IMPRESSION_STATS in another uplift https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/commit/9a91d03b05f99a46016bcd4134b876b6a4f9c5ca, which should also stop the leaking event.

Comment 20

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

The commit you link to in comment 19 seems to be connected with bug 1522832 which landed on m-c (for nightly 67) but isn't on 66 be ta yet. Should it be? If so can you request uplift there?

Comment 21

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

Yeah sounds like bug 1522832 is now going through the uplift process.

This one was initially a quicker fix and fixing the core problem, bug 1522832 changed the code path this one was fixing for, so the issue is not currently being hit. bug 1522832 wasn't initially intended for uplift when this one was tagged, but it ended up being needed, and tagged before this one.

I'm pretty sure I can mark this as 66 wont fix, but let me know if I did something wrong in this process.

Comment 22

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

Although, I'm going to add some verification steps for this bug to bug 1522832 to ensure it does get fixed in beta.