1779505 - Sync causes Firefox to crash when refreshing in the background or manually

Status: RESOLVED MOVED

(Firefox for iOS :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Jeremy]

I've had this issue for weeks if not months and was hoping that updates, especially with a report sent each time it crashed would help (I always got the crash dialog when I reopened Firefox so I assumed it was reporting something in the background), but now, I feel like filling out this form is my last chance to figure out what's going on.

What I realized over time is that every time Sync refreshes in the background, Firefox will crash. It is the same when syncing manually in the settings. Since I deactivated Sync, Firefox has completely stopped crashing, or at least I get a very occasional crash when opening a private tab (which I understand even less), but no more daily crashes over and over again every day.

Of course, I've already uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox many times but it crashes again as soon as I set up Sync on my iPhone SE (2020) with iOS 15.5 (as on previous versions).

Comment 1

[Isabel Rios[:isabel_rios]]

Thanks for filling this issue. Would it be possible to get the crash logs to investigate further?
This is how you could get them:

• On your iPhone, navigate to the Settings app.
• Go to Privacy.
• Go to Diagnostics & Usage.
• Go to Diagnostic & Usage Data.
• You will see an alphabetical list all crash logs on your device, select the one named Client-Date.ips

If you could attach it here it would help the team to debug the issue. Thanks

Comment 2

[Jeremy]

Attachment: Client Reports.zip

Crash reports from July 7th and 8th for reference. Although it's reported as iOS 16 because I've had it installed since June 30, Firefox was already behaving that way under versions 15 and 15.5.

Comment 3

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

Thanks for that - it doesn't seem directly related to sync, but somehow a chain of events which include sync - we are still trying to work out exactly what is going on here.

Comment 4

[Simon Basca [:SimonB]]

Thanks for the feedback @Jeremy. We are trying our best to reproduce the issue and to find reliable steps to reproduce and would really appreciate your help. On your iOS device, could you please go to Settings -> Tap on Account Name and disable History Sync. Let us know if the crash is still reproducible after disabling this setting.

Comment 5

[Jeremy]

Attachment: Client Reports July 14, 15.zip

Thanks, everyone. Since I had ended up deactivating Sync (see my bug description), I just resynced my account while disabling History Sync. You will also find another archive attached with yesterday's and today's reports for reference; these were generated while I did not have my account synced, and always while trying to open a private tab or a link in a private tab, except for Client-2022-07-15-234617.ips and Client-2022-07-15-234757.ips which were generated by manually syncing without history as you requested (the difference is that I had to make several attempts because it does not seem to crash all the time this way). I will also add future reports generated during my daily use without History Sync, if any.

Comment 6

[Simon Basca [:SimonB]]

We've found that the issue is related to Synced tabs and we've been working on a fix at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/11289.