bookmarks importing from firefox is FAILING every time
Categories
(Toolkit :: Places, defect)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: spiderman0000111, Unassigned)
Details
Attachments
(2 files)
Screenshot 2023-09-23 140847.png
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0
Steps to reproduce:
Firefox Exported bookmarks (and even successful proven exported bookmark html backups from the past) are failing to import into multiple versions of firefox on multiple operating systems. Tried importing bookmarks on all three versions of firefox both new exported backups and older bookmark backup files (proven to work in the past) Every single one of them is now failing to import giving the error message: "This file doesn't include any bookmark data. Pick another file."
To add insult to injury, "picking another file" I ended up trying every old and new exported backup file I could find to import in Firefox on both MacOS and Windows 11. NONE worked. All of them continue to give the same stupid "error" message. see attached images for detail.
Actual results:
Firefox exported bookmark backup files both old and new are failing to be even recognized to contain bookmark data on all three versions of firefox and on multiple major Operating systems (windows 11 and MacOS Catalina)
Many of the older backup files worked fine for importing in the past but are now not being recognized at all for reasons that defy logic.
Expected results:
bookmarks in the past would import successfully and show up ready to go in the browsers. Something I had done just last year successfully multiple times. I don't understand where the breakage occurred or how it is now unable to recognize bookmark backups. I even tried the old old method of backing up to a .JSON file. This too was a fail. What is going with these backup mechanics in this browser? It's essentially now a useless feature that still exists but can't seem to be utilized correctly anymore.
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Reporter | |
Comment 1•2 years ago
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Comment 2•2 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Migration' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 3•2 years ago
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Reporter, can you please attach if possible an html file that has this issue? I was not able to reproduce it on Win10/Mac12.6 using latest Nightly build 119.0a1(20230924092410), import and export work fine on my machines.
Also would it be possible for you to try in reproducing it with a new and empty profile? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile
Thank you so much for your report.
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Comment 4•2 years ago
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This sounds really bad and we would like to fix it. To work out what is going on, Monica is right that we'd probably need to see one of the files that isn't working. I just exported some bookmarks, then imported them in a new profile, on macOS, and it worked fine.
It would also be helpful if you could check if there are any errors in the browser console (open with ctrl-shift-j on Windows, cmd-shift-j on macOS) when the import fails.
It would also be useful to know if using the bookmarks manager (ctrl-shift-o / cmd-shift-o) and importing from there works any better (it's likely it doesn't, but it would be good to check either way to narrow down what the issue is).
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Reporter | |
Comment 5•2 years ago
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so for the bookmark manager, it does not import. I'm not going to share my personal bookmarks. I understand it would help, but no. privacy. and also feel that i shouldn't have to reset and repair a profile every month because firefox stops being able to handle it constantly. that's just a bad browser nothing more. It may work with a new profile but then I'm just gonna have to try and re-import everything again... why not try and create some new mechanics for fixing these kinds of issues that plague people constantly and make the overall browser more stable, efficient and less breakable? it seems to break and start malfunctioning real easy. It still crashes on me daily due to a video gpu compatibility glitch that I can't solve because it's intel related and gpu custom drivers which technically are NOT too old. only a year old at this point. maybe improve the profile/bookmark export - import technology to work more reliably and efficiently as well. I don't know. just suggestions. I stand by my report though. older bookmark files that successfully imported before no longer do on many different systems and browsers. I ended up in once instance having to manually copy my profile into another system in it's entirety into the windows directory. that was literally the only way to get the bookmarks to transfer, which it did but was still way more of a hassle than it needs to or should be imho.
My system by the way is a gaming laptop with plenty of horsepower so, the fact firefox continues to struggle is very revealing in that it needs some serious repair work done for power users lest it become even more irrelevant a browser. Maybe a new tool (separate downloadable program even) for example that can repair profiles from Mozilla? something like this could potentially solve a lot of issues without the need to completely revamp and overhaul the whole browser? just a thought.
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Comment 6•2 years ago
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(In reply to spiderman0000111 from comment #5)
so for the bookmark manager, it does not import.
Thanks for checking. What about the errors I asked about? Any new errors appear in the browser console (see comment 4) when this is failing to work? (you could clear it out before attempting to import to make sure only relevant things get reported)
I'm not going to share my personal bookmarks. I understand it would help, but no. privacy.
Sure, but if no bookmarks import/export works for you at all, could you confirm that it also doesn't work if you create a new profile and export a bogus set of non-personal bookmarks from there?
and also feel that i shouldn't have to reset and repair a profile every month because firefox stops being able to handle it constantly.
I didn't ask you to reset/repair things - but we do need to narrow down what is broken here in order to fix it. We cannot magically fix the import of bookmarks for you if we don't know what is breaking. Importing works fine for me and Monica, so we'll need to narrow down what is different on your machines, your sets of bookmarks, disk, or whatever other factor that is causing it to not work for you.
[...] why not try and create some new mechanics for fixing these kinds of issues that plague people constantly and make the overall browser more stable, efficient and less breakable?
Trying to make the browser more stable is what I'm trying to do. I know it's annoying to have to answer all these questions but there is no other way to get this information, given that it works fine for other people. If we added some kind of automated collection of this information, we probably couldn't get very useful information without also accidentally collecting private information (e.g. file paths included in error messages), which we don't want to do.
My system by the way is a gaming laptop with plenty of horsepower so, the fact firefox continues to struggle
If you're having performance problems as well, it's probably worth filing a separate report about that and using https://profiler.firefox.com/ to check what is happening when the browser is slow. But in this ticket, let's keep it focused on the bookmarks issue - if we're trying to fix multiple problems in one ticket, things get confusing very quickly.
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Reporter | |
Comment 7•2 years ago
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(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #6)
(In reply to spiderman0000111 from comment #5)
so for the bookmark manager, it does not import.
Thanks for checking. What about the errors I asked about? Any new errors appear in the browser console (see comment 4) when this is failing to work? (you could clear it out before attempting to import to make sure only relevant things get reported)
I'm not going to share my personal bookmarks. I understand it would help, but no. privacy.
Sure, but if no bookmarks import/export works for you at all, could you confirm that it also doesn't work if you create a new profile and export a bogus set of non-personal bookmarks from there?
and also feel that i shouldn't have to reset and repair a profile every month because firefox stops being able to handle it constantly.
I didn't ask you to reset/repair things - but we do need to narrow down what is broken here in order to fix it. We cannot magically fix the import of bookmarks for you if we don't know what is breaking. Importing works fine for me and Monica, so we'll need to narrow down what is different on your machines, your sets of bookmarks, disk, or whatever other factor that is causing it to not work for you.
[...] why not try and create some new mechanics for fixing these kinds of issues that plague people constantly and make the overall browser more stable, efficient and less breakable?
Trying to make the browser more stable is what I'm trying to do. I know it's annoying to have to answer all these questions but there is no other way to get this information, given that it works fine for other people. If we added some kind of automated collection of this information, we probably couldn't get very useful information without also accidentally collecting private information (e.g. file paths included in error messages), which we don't want to do.
My system by the way is a gaming laptop with plenty of horsepower so, the fact firefox continues to struggle
If you're having performance problems as well, it's probably worth filing a separate report about that and using https://profiler.firefox.com/ to check what is happening when the browser is slow. But in this ticket, let's keep it focused on the bookmarks issue - if we're trying to fix multiple problems in one ticket, things get confusing very quickly.
browser isn't "slow" due to performance of the laptop itself necessarily. browser basically takes a dump whenever there are a lot of tabs open or a video plays back and it suddenly can't handle it so the entire browser inevitably freezes up (instead of just that tab that triggered it) and "stops responding" forcing windows to close everything over and over and over again. ad nauseam.
ZERO other browsers do this no matter how many tabs I have open or only do so rarely. only firefox. all versions of firefox do this. it could be related to INTEL's complete obliviousness in putting out terribly broken horrible drivers for their video GPUs... not accounting for the customization's done by specific brands like ACER whom themselves refuse to put out anything past 2022 for their custom drivers for windows. THAT being said, again, every other browser I've used does not have these issues. basic math says...
as for the bookmarks. obviously a fresh profile with barely any bookmarks are handled fine. but then again, what is the point in managing large numbers of bookmarks if firefox basically just stops functioning at a certain point and can't handle a bookmark database with numbers past a certain point? it's a database corruption issue in how firefox handles and manages bookmarks... which is essentially GOOD to a point and then it seems to break down and have all kinds of problems. so yeah. fresh profile, fresh install, barely any bookmarks, easy to export import. beyond that? firefox seems to have many many issues. I don't even feel like wasting my time with it anymore. I'll likely just start over again and go from there. but the point is, should this have to be done over and over again because of fatal flaws in the design of a browser that break at a certain point inevitably?
The video issue that causes every version of firefox to freeze and forcibly close is even more annoying than the bookmarks. Can't use Intel's latest because they are more buggy than the one I have. And Acer clearly doesn't care as they don't update it anymore. So it's a huge gamble with Intel's updated drivers as the last two I tried forced me to have to redo my entire system as they literally broke it all and stopped all functionality. Intel, as many are aware, has been trying to compete with Nvidia in the GPU department... and failing miserably in their attempts.
it now does this multiple times a day. some 'updates' only make it worse. eventually using this browser is going to become if not already far more trouble than it's worth and I'm just going to have to move on from it. Thanks for trying. maybe mozilla will pull off a miracle and turn things around noticeably, but I have many reasons to doubt this at this point.
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Comment 8•2 years ago
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Mike, is there any other diagnosis we can do about what is causing import/export of (presumably large?) bookmark files to fail in this way, without access to the bookmark file in question?
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Comment 9•2 years ago
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So the first thing I'd suggest trying is importing from the HTML file using a different, older entrypoint. Perhaps there's a bug in the new migration wizard, or how it's using the HTML bookmarks import mechanism. I suppose that's possible.
spiderman0000111, if you enter the Library window (Ctrl-Shift-h should do that), and then choose "Import and Backup" > "Import Bookmarks from HTML", does that pathway work?
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Comment 10•2 years ago
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(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️) from comment #9)
So the first thing I'd suggest trying is importing from the HTML file using a different, older entrypoint. Perhaps there's a bug in the new migration wizard, or how it's using the HTML bookmarks import mechanism. I suppose that's possible.
spiderman0000111, if you enter the Library window (Ctrl-Shift-h should do that), and then choose "Import and Backup" > "Import Bookmarks from HTML", does that pathway work?
I tried asking this in comment 4 and comment 5 suggested the outcome was the same, I think?
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Comment 11•2 years ago
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Ooof, sorry, I missed that part.
Certainly errors from the browser console would be helpful here. If the error is happening in the Library window too, I don't think this is a migration bug anymore - I suspect it's an issue in BookmarkHTMLUtils, which falls under Places.
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Comment 12•2 years ago
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(In reply to spiderman0000111 from comment #7)
as for the bookmarks. obviously a fresh profile with barely any bookmarks are handled fine. but then again, what is the point in managing large numbers of bookmarks if firefox basically just stops functioning at a certain point and can't handle a bookmark database with numbers past a certain point?
How many bookmarks are we speaking about, tens, hundreds, thousands? It may be easier to test if you give us at least some statistics, if not the bookmarks themselves.
How many bookmarks do you have?
How long is it taking before showing the error?
What's the size of the bookmarks.html file?
Thanks.
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Comment 13•2 years ago
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We cannot reproduce the problem, and we don't have enough data to try reproducing it in a better way.
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