1717073 - Ancestry.com is failing when trying to type text into the message field of their messaging system

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Storage: Quota Manager, defect, P3)

Description

[Michael Crowe]

Attachment: Firefox_Ancestry_Warnings.txt

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0

Steps to reproduce:

In the messaging system for Ancestry.com, where users can communicate with other users, the field that says "Type your message here" will not accept input from the keyboard, nor cut and paste. Typing produces no test in the field, rendering the messaging system inoperative.

I have cleared cookies and cache, rebooted, fully uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled with no extensions: problem persists. The "Inspect" command lists lots of warnings, attached.

Actual results:

No text appears in the message field.

Expected results:

For the past 3 years and prior to the update to 89.0, typing into the messaging text field produces text.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Messaging System' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Michael Crowe]

I should have noted that this error occurs only after using the Ancestry system for some time. Initially, the message field works as expected; however, after changing windows and doing work on other tabs, when returning to the messaging system, either as an open tab or invoking it via an attempt to message another user from their profile, then the inability to enter text into the messaging field occurs and cannot be fixed without exiting Ancestry and re-entering (or restarting Firefox).
-MXC

Comment 3

[Michael Crowe]

When the system stops allowing text to be entered into the message field, the following errors appear:

UNABLE storageutil.checkAvailableLocalStorage DOMException: The quota has been exceeded.

Failed to write to storage for type:chatText and channelId:CHfcc425658ddc4ce9b9b6e5f752920460

Comment 4

[Rares Doghi, Desktop QA]

Hi Michael, thank you for taking the time to log this issue, I tried to reproduce this issue on our end but it seems even for a free trial account you still need to add a paypal or credit card.

Do you happen to have a test account or something similar or maybe a reduced test case we could use in order to reproduce the issue on our end ?

In the mean time can you please try our latest Nightly build and check if the issue still occurs on your end ? you can find the build here: https://nightly.mozilla.org/

Does that Message system from Ancestry.com work on Chrome or Edge ?

Comment 5

[Michael Crowe]

Attachment: bannerx.JPG

Comment 6

[Michael Crowe]

Yes, it would be difficult to debug without an Ancestry account, as I don't believe the messaging system works unless you have a paid account. And as far as I can tell, the problem occurs only in that one text field. There's no easy way to give you access to the account, I'm afraid. I have tested the messaging system on Edge and Vivaldi and on other machines, and have not been able to reproduce it yet.

I stripped every trace of FF from my main machine and reinstalled clean. However, after some time logged into Ancestry, the problem reappears. The only way to fix is to clear cookies/cache for that site, but that, of course, requires me to log back in, so a bit of a pain.

However, I have noticed that this is likely tied to a warning from Ancestry that "local storage is not enabled", which directs to this page at Mozilla:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/websites-say-cookies-are-blocked-unblock-them

I have attached a jpg of the warning image that comes up from Ancestry. This itself is not a new issue, but the connection to the message field is new, and seems related given the error messages that show up under the hood when I inspect the message field:

UNABLE storageutil.checkAvailableLocalStorage DOMException: The quota has been exceeded.

Failed to write to storage for type:chatText and channelId:CHfcc425658ddc4ce9b9b6e5f752920460

I have adjusted the security/privacy settings in FF several different ways, currently set as "Custom", with cookies unchecked and the other three elements checked. I'm also set to delete cookies when FF closes, so I should be starting fresh each time. Under these settings, the message field error occurs after being logged into/active on Ancestry for some time.

Comment 7

[Michael Crowe]

Sorry, should have also said: I'd be willing to try the nightlies, but this problem has persisted from released versions 89.0 to 89.1, so unless somebody specifically addresses it, I guess it's not going away. Either Ancestry is implementing things in a way that's inconsistent with FF's expectations...or something...

Comment 8

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Tim: this seems related to storage access for 3rd parties, and/or webcompat

Comment 9

[Michael Crowe]

The 3rd party storage thing is definitely a common theme among Ancestry users (for years) who receive the warning message: "It looks like you have local storage disabled. While you'll still be able to use the site, you may notice that pages load more slowly. Fix the issue."

However, breaking the ability to input text in the messaging field is apparently new, though, I believe entirely related.

The update to 89.0.2 this morning did nothing to change the situation, I'm afraid. With no other clear path, I have regrettably been forced to fall back to using Edge when using the Ancestry system, which is a shame. Even after hours of work via the Edge browser, this inability to type into the messaging text field does not appear.

Comment 10

[Tim Huang[:timhuang] [PTO 10/19 ~ 11/3]]

It doesn't look to be an issue of 3rd parties storage access. The reason is twofold.

• The issue remains even in the ETP "custom" with an unchecked cookie option. This means all cookies/storage are allowed.
• The error message The quota has been exceeded. looks suspicious to me.
  So, I think this is not related to AntiTracking, but more storage in general. And the error message could be from no space in the disk or the browser has written too much space in Disk.

Comment 11

[Michael Crowe]

I'm happy to test anything you folks request. Firefox and its cache are installed on a 1 TB spinning drive with 774 GB of free space. No other program appears to be running into any disk space limitations. Vivaldi browser is on the same drive, yet I can't replicate the error state at Ancestry with Vivaldi. Ancestry's recommendation is to stop using Firefox - not my preferred path.

Comment 12

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

There is some work ongoing to improve storage limits in bug 1735713. This might or might not be related here.

Comment 13

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

Can you set this preference dom.storage.snapshot_reusing to false and check if the bug can still be reproduced ?