158326 - Profile settings get lost/corrupt when user launches new instance of browers/mail component (profile on network)

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 170539

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[David Shettler]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.1a) Gecko/20020614
BuildID:    2002061401

If a user launches mozilla from the command line or a desktop icon.  And
launches mozilla mail while the browser is opened, their mail settings seem to
get lost/corrupt.  Same happens to their profile settings if they launch mail
first, then the browser.  This does NOT occur if the user launches either from
the Window menu.

Seems like there's some kinda locking issue possibly?  Please note these users
home directories are NFS mounted only in SOME instyances.  We recreate the
problem using our SunRay appliances that don't NFS mount anything.

Everything else works perfectly provided they don't launch two or more instances
of mozilla at the same time.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.type mozilla at the shell prompt.  wait for it to load up.
2.type mozilla -mail at the shell prompt while the browser is loaded.
3.you'll notice problems right away.
4.if you then close both and try to launch either one you'll notice problems.

Actual Results:  Sometimes the browser can't launch at all afterwards...you get
stuck on profile creation...and when you create a profile and click "finish"
mozilla never even launches.  Not sure if it's dumping core or not everytime.  I
know it does sometimes.

Expected Results:  Mozilla shouldnt be locking the profiles...at least that's
what it seems to be doing.  Ideally users WOULDNT launch extra browsers or the
mail client from outside of the existing window (IE from a command line).  But
users will be users.

Could this be an NFS issue?  is nfs causing the file locking?  I don't know.

The NFS server is a SunFire 280R running Solaris 8 and it houses the mozilla
build and the user home directories.  The clients vary...some are SunRay
appliances (which arent using NFS actually) and others are Sun Blade 100's and
Ultra 5's.  All running Solaris 8, latest patch level.  Since the problem occurs
locally and via nfs mounted hosts I'm lead to believe it's not NFS.

Comment 1

[Patrick Xia]

WFM Windows XP+SP1 20020718
WFM Linux+KDE      20020710 (using desktop icons)

Comment 2

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

Sounds like in your case, locking is not happening. For me, on Linux (local home
dir) I get this:

1.type mozilla at the shell prompt.  wait for it to load up.
2.type mozilla -mail at the shell prompt while the browser is loaded.

Here, the profile dialog comes up. If I select the profile which is in use by
the 1st instance, I get an error alert saying that profile is in use and have to
pick another one.

3.you'll notice problems right away.

Comment 3

[David Shettler]

Ok, after more playing around I think I've narrowed this down a bit.  I thought 
it wasnt working on our sunray appliances before (non-nfs mounted disk).  After 
further testing everything IS working fine on the appliances.  Nothing gets 
overwritten and there is no dataloss...if you open up another instance of 
either mozilla or mozilla mail it will force you to create a new profile (or 
chose one not in use).  But if you close everything and load up mail again it 
doesnt have any issues...goes with the default profile and you don't lose any 
data.

However the problem does show up on our hosts whom remotely mount the 
homedirs.  As Conrad mentioned...locking isnt working.  If you open up two 
instances it still forces you to create another profile...but next time you 
load up mozilla / mozilla mail your original preferences/settings are gone.  So 
sounds like file locking over nfs isnt working.

This is a tough problem to describe...doing my best.  But I'm starting to 
wonder if it's a solaris nfs issue and not a mozilla issue.  Or if my nfs is 
misconfigured.  All the proper daemons are running though...on the server and 
the clients. statd, lockd, nfsd, mountd, nfslogd etc.  If you need some 
specific information that I've forgotten to mention let me know.

Comment 4

[chris barr]

I read & tried these comments - on WinME.

Once my email settings are lost (profile lost?),
starting Mozilla from the "Program menu" - pull-down - then email does NOT 
result in finding my settings.  This is with Mozilla 1.1b, installed 8/9.

Mine could be a different problem.

Comment 5

[jraymond]

Something just like this happened to me using build id:2002080819 on WindowsXP.
I'm not sure of the exact sequence, but I think I had started the mail
application first. I then decided to change the fonts for the browser. Then I
quit mozilla, rebooted, and noticed that I had lost my mail settings upon
running mozilla again.

Comment 6

[Martin van Dijken]

Well, I can't contribute much to this bug, except for the fact that it just
happened to me as well. I'm using winXp and have my Application Data on my
Windows-partition(which is NFS). I did something "wrong", but don't remember
exactly how I did it wrong. My profile settings are lost now, but strangely my
folders etc still remain on disk. Which leads me to my question. Is there a way
to recover my mail settings, email messages etc?

Comment 7

[Paul Mclachlan]

I've had this happen to me twice now with 1.1 on Windows XP.  I actually lose
more than just my mail settings - I lose my encrypted database of passwords, etc
- still trying to work out how to get those back.

It happened to me when... well, I have two users in windows XP.  User A logs in
& quicklauch boots mozilla without opening any windows.  Then I switch to User
B, quicklauch loads.  I loaded a browser and did something that required the
master password.  Then I logged out, went back to user A and loaded the mail
window - empty - all the settings were lost.

I doesn't seem to have created a new profile directory, just ... forgotten that
there were things in there.  I'll upgrade to a newer build & see what I can see
- it seems that this is quite serious (those profile settings took a lot of work).

Comment 8

[Brian W. Carver]

I also have had my mail profile corrupted and lost my saved password information
several times recently on moz 1.3a, on a PC running SuSE linux 8.0. 

It seems to happen anytime mozilla freezes up and I force it to shut down
(either by killing the process or by rebooting KDE.)  Something doesn't get
saved right, I assume, when mozilla closes in this way and then while your
profile info is there on the hard drive, I can't find a way to get mozilla to
see my mail again.

In the most recent instance of this happening, I could launch the browser, but
if I clicked on the little envelope in the bottom left corner to start mail, the
envelope would just go dark to show it was depressed, and stay that way frozen
forever.

This only started happening to me with moz 1.3a. I've switched to 1.2.1 for a
while to see if it continues with it. 

Others are describing similar profile corruption problems in bugs #182260 and
#186755.

Comment 9

[Andrew Hagen]

Duplicate of bug 170539?

Comment 10

[Andrew Hagen]

Is everyone here experiencing this with profiles mounted on networked resources?
Please specify NFS, Samba, or other. 

Is prefs.js merely corrupted? Do you get a startup configuration error or not?

Is prefs.js wiped out, like in bug 170539?

Comment 11

[Grace Bush]

looks like duplicate of bug 170539

reporters- are you still seeing this problem?

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 170539 ***

Comment 12

[Martin van Dijken]

Can't be sure. I've had this occur to me only once and after that decided I
hated Mozilla mail and was never going to use it again. With the advent of
Minotaur I'm reconsidering that position, but I wasn't 100% sure what I did
wrong anyways. 

Does seem to me you've got it backwards BTW. Bug 170539 was formed later, so
it's most likely a dup of this one. Can see your point for doing it the other
way around since that bug is far more lively, but technically it's incorrect;)

Comment 13

[Grace Bush]

I agree- later bugs duplicate earlier ones- but as you noted, that had more
comments/ information. 
c'mon back to moz mail