Open Bug 1762685 Opened 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Enable update logging for all releases.

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, enhancement)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Preferences
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: unicorn.consulting, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug,
URL
)

Details

Currently, if something goes wrong with an update, like the user gets Geko version error messages, or profile per install decides the existing profile is not OK there is no canonical source of looking for the issue unless the user enables logging and waits for a repeat.

It would certainly remove a lot of guess work from support if we could locate the point of failure. Enhanced bug reporting would also occur as the question would not just be "Couldn't load XPCOM".

While I do not know what a log looks like, I would assume that disk storage and delays in the update for writing the log should not be an issue. I am filling this bug as when I asked about the issue I was asked about the chance of a log. No chance as we don't routinely create them.

Blocks: tb-logging

My thoughts... (pertaining to update logging)

  • How much disk space are we talking about? I expect this number is relatively small compared to email data and should not be an issue for most people.
  • AFAIK there's no rotation or cleanup of the update log. Personally, I would like to only keep the last n update attempts, otherwise we will get people sending us entire log directories of potentially years worth of useless update data when we only need the most recent. This will likely require updating toolkit code.
  • I expect that this idea has been discussed ad nauseum in some bug somewhere, and a decision was made to keep update logging off by default. I'd like to know the reasons why if they are documented someplace.
  • I'm not sure just how necessary it is. If an update fails, it seems like logging can be turned on, wait for (or force) the next attempt and then we have a log. This has worked well for me in the past when I've helped with update issues.

Profile logging .. yes with as much pain as it causes, anything would be helpful. Again, it probably involves updating toolkit code unfortunately. A mail client is not a web browser and people lose real data when it goes wrong.

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