1623331 - Firefox Sync clears most bookmark folders

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Sync, defect, P4)

Description

[tom]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:74.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/74.0

Steps to reproduce:

Sign into my Firefox Sync Account.

Actual results:

After a few moments all my bookmarks that are in a sub-folder are lost. The folder structure itself stays in tact.

I could restore my bookmarks from before I signed into Sync (from yesterday). I tried a few times, but result is always the same!

Expected results:

Do not delete all my bookmarks when syncing!

Please note: I am using Firefox on Ubuntu for more than 10 years now and am a Sync user since the beginning.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[janet [:janet]]

We're sorry to hear you are having this problem, but thanks very much for taking the time to make this report. We aren't sure what is causing this issue, but Sync does keep some logs which may help us find the problem. Instructions for how to locate and attach the logs can be found at https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices/Sync/File_a_desktop_bug - please follow those instructions and attach the sync logs to this bug.

Again, thanks for the report and thanks for your help in finding these kinds of issues.

Comment 3

[Lina Butler [:lina]]

Also, would you mind sharing how many bookmarks you have, how they're organized—roughly how many bookmarks are in each folder—and what other devices (other Firefox Desktops, the old Firefox for Android, Firefox Preview, and Firefox for iOS) you're syncing with? Thank you!

Comment 4

[tom]

Attachment: error-sync-1584606929677.zip

Created with about:sync log tools

Comment 5

[tom]

Attachment: aboutsync-logfiles.zip

first attempt to create log. But it's small so not sure it logging was working correctly..

Comment 6

[tom]

Thank you for your swift response, Lina.

What I can tell you:

• Total about 2000 bookmarks
• about 200KB
• synchronized in the past (about 6 months ago?) with FF on Android Beta

Comment 7

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Thanks for uploading the log, and sorry for the delay getting back to you - from the large log, I suspect that after you get frustrated with Sync being dumb, you are doing something like:

• Disconnecting sync on a desktop profile
• Restoring from a backup
• Re-enabling sync on that profile
• Possibly doing the same - other than the "restore" part - on a second device.
• The syncing of that second device is causing the items to be deleted.

Is that correct? If so, is it possible that the items being removed are actually duplicates of other bookmarks somewhere else in the bookmarks tree?

(For a future me: The log shows:

• Sync ID changed from to BLDdpAQWmFRy; resetting mirror
• Many incoming items, including many tombstones
• All records outgoing.)

Comment 8

[tom]

hi Mark, From your analyses I think you understood that I still use other devices / installs? But I don't. I logged out of FireFox any other device, actually de-installed on phones and so on and don't use FF there anymore, just Opera. So, I just use this one desktop install.

Is your comment then still valid? If so, how to 'reset' stop Sync stops assuming it's actually doing correctly ?

About your second question: the bookmark folders are emtpy after sync and I did not see the contents elsewhere in the tree. That said, I did not specifically went through all the folders to see if some sub-tree embarked there.. ;)

Comment 9

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

That's very odd - it seems extremely unlikely that Sync would corrupt your bookmarks with only a single profile. Sync never makes changes when it uploads changes to the servers - it only does when pulling new changes down - but in a single-device scenario there will literally never be changes found to download as part of a sync (except when you restore - but presumably you only do that after finding a problem). Maybe it's something else - eg I wonder if your profile has some corruption issues causing sqlite itself to lose things? Either way, I'm afraid I'm struggling to think of anything which could explain this.

Comment 10

[tom]

I just double checked all my devices, which is just three in total. And it hold its ground. Currently, and that since a few months, I only have one Firefox signed in which is my main Dell XPS15/Ubuntu 19.10, the one where the issue appears.

So as I understand it, somehow Sync assumes that after each restore, the latest version is now in the cloud and it needs to pull again?

This means that either:
1- the timestamp in the cloud is wrong and got set to some far ahead (?)
2- or after restore my local timestamp is not updated, so Sync sees it as older version (?) or
3- Sync somehow ignores the timestamps al together(?)
4- Sync trips over some database error I migth have locally that causes bookmarks to go away (so even though cloud version is ok as well)

How to find out? )))

Comment 11

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(In reply to tom from comment #10)

I just double checked all my devices, which is just three in total. And it hold its ground. Currently, and that since a few months, I only have one Firefox signed in which is my main Dell XPS15/Ubuntu 19.10, the one where the issue appears.

So as I understand it, somehow Sync assumes that after each restore, the latest version is now in the cloud and it needs to pull again?

No - Sync just knows things have changed radically, so it needs to "reconcile" what is on the servers. It tends to prefer what local - so I don't think this is actually related to your problem.

If you disable bookmark syncing, then sync, then re-enable it, all bookmarks on the server will be removed. They will also be removed if you restore your bookmarks while Sync is disabled.

Comment 12

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(To be clear, sync is far more complex than a simple "latest is local" vs "latest is on the servers" - its model is more like "everyone is correct in their own way, let's work out how to reconcile things")