Open Bug 1887065 Opened 1 year ago Updated 1 year ago

Firefox profile appears to be, or acts as if it is read-only

Categories

(Firefox for Android :: Accounts and Sync, defect, P5)

Product:
Firefox for Android
Component:
Accounts and Sync
Version:
Firefox 123
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: newsforcous, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android 13; Mobile; rv:123.0) Gecko/123.0 Firefox/123.0
Firefox for Android

Steps to reproduce:

Firefox Android- tabs revert back to an old sync, timeframe is variable from within an hour to a few days later after trying again. Manual sync not working.

Actual results:

New tabs and info lost

Expected results:

New tabs should not be affected and close during next sync. New synce should work and reflect current data selection.

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

Component: Untriaged → Sync

I don't quite understand the report - you mean that when you are on desktop and look at the tabs from your Android device, they are from a long time ago? Or something else?

Flags: needinfo?(newsforcous)

No, this is all on my Android. I will use my phone and add/remove/change tabs, and then when I go back to Firefox Android a few hours to days later, my recent changes are undone and reverts back to the same sync every time from 1+ month ago.

Flags: needinfo?(newsforcous)

Sync doesn't open and close tabs. It just keeps a list of tabs from other signed in devices. You could try signing out of sync and seeing if it still happens? Let us know if that works.

It still happens.
It also won't keep me signed out. When I click sign out, it doesn't look like it signed out but when I go back a screen, it says I'm signed out. When I go to sign in, nothing happens and I can't sign back in. When I close the app and restart it, I'm automatically signed back in and the old tab selection reloads as well.
Is an uninstall, reinstall my next option?

It sounds like the file-system on your device has become read-only or similar. An uninstall might be a good next step, although it might also be a hardware problem starting to show up.

Component: Sync → General
Product: Firefox → Fenix
Summary: Tabs keep reverting back to old sync. → Firefox profile appears to be, or acts as if it is read-only

Also, I thought I found a workaround but it's no longer working either. The workaround was to manually go to settings, what to sync, and cycle the checkbox on/off for credit cards, since I don't store credit cards anyways. Not sure if that helps at all.

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:bclark, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(brclark)
Component: General → Accounts and Sync

What device / operating system are you running? How many tabs do you currently have open? How much free space does your device currently have?

Flags: needinfo?(newsforcous)
Flags: needinfo?(brclark)

Samsung galaxy S20 Ultra, Android 13.
There's no tab count anymore but probably over 200 tabs. Storage has over 36 GB available.
I will add everything seems to be working okay as late.

Flags: needinfo?(newsforcous)
See Also: → 1890298

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:boek, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(jboek)

Going to keep this open but setting it as an S4. Let us know if you run into the problem again.

Severity: -- → S4
Flags: needinfo?(jboek)
Priority: -- → P5

I have this but the description language ('FxA automatically logs out of sync') makes more sense to me (than 'sync is read only') at bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1890298.

I think that they are duplicates. I'll head there since I suspect that more people will find the issue there.

:newsforcous perhaps you could try and access saved passwords or sending a tab to a linked device whilst it is in this state. They just don't load for me; I'm logged out. I too have lots of tabs open and autohidden over time. I wonder if this is contributory... some sort of overload?

I am experiencing the very similar symptoms.

Currently on Firefox for Android - Build 123.2.0, on a Galaxy Note 10+
But it's been happening consistently across all versions of Firefox for several months.
I have "infinite" tabs open - I believe around 300 - and almost all of them are grouped under "Inactive tabs".
I have sync turned on.

Whenever Firefox is restarted the tabs are restored to an earlier state than expected. Tabs opened in the last few weeks are missing, and a couple tabs that I'd closed are back (only ever a couple). This occurs whether I'm restarting the phone, closing Firefox explicitly (i.e. swiping up on it from the open apps screen), or applying an update to Firefox.

The History screen does not load: I only see the title "History" along with a loading animation that never ends.

Looking at Synced Tabs from desktop Firefox, I only see the old tabs that were restored, no new tabs are synced. However if I close an old restored tab on mobile it did disappear from the list of synced tabs on desktop.

There are 3 crashes from this year under "About Firefox -> Crashes"

  • NullPointerException on 2024-02-11 - no stack trace
  • OutOfMemoryError on 2024-03-30 - "Failed to allocate a 32 byte allocation with 2201312 free bytes and 2149KB until OOM, target footprint 268435456, growth limit 268435456p giving up on allocation because <1% of heap free after GB."
  • OutOfMemoryError on 2024-04-17 - "Failed to allocate a 16 byte allocation with 641576 free bytes and 626KB until OOM, target footprint 268435456, growth limit 268435456p giving up on allocation because <1% of heap free after GB."

My best guess is that something is preventing open tabs from being saved to file most of the time.

As I was typing this I re-tested everything to make sure I was remembering the details correctly, and... it started working for the first time I've seen in at least 3+ months.

  • A new tab was correctly restored after a restart of Firefox.
  • That new tab has appeared in Synced Tabs.
  • History loads, and it even shows a couple sites that did not restore earlier today (but not all of them, there should have been at least a dozen). Most of the entries are from desktop Firefox.
  • Some, but not all, history entries that I can see on mobile are appearing in desktop history. They are the test tab I opened minutes ago, and sites from at least 2 days ago. Nothing from this morning or yesterday.

I was tinkering with the settings at the time, though I don't see how they'd be related:

  • Set "Settings -> Data collection -> Studies" to Off
  • Changed "Tabs -> Tab view" from "Grid" to "List"
  • "Changed Homepage -> Opening screen" from "Homepage after four hours of inactivity" to "Last tab"

Hopefully all this can help someone diagnose the underlying issue.
My plan was to clean up my open tabs, back them up manually, and reinstall Firefox. For now I'll see whether the issue reappears - I'll definitely update here if it does.

Definitely intermittent - it's started happening again.

The last couple mobile tabs have not synced to desktop.

  • Selecting "Sync Now" on desktop results in no change.
  • Selecting "Sync" from the Synced Tabs tab of Firefox mobile has changed the button to "Synchronising..." and it's been like that for a few minutes now. (This is the first time I've tried triggering the sync from mobile)
  • Restarting Firefox on mobile has resulted in only the synced tabs being restored.
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.