1890662 - Android Firefox loses all user data, including bookmarks, passwords, tabs when upgraded

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Fenix :: Bookmarks, defect)

Description

[D Tyler]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/107.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Firefox for Android

Steps to reproduce:

Using a Galaxy S8 running Android 9:

1. Upgrade to Firefox 109.2.0 (Build #2015930059) using the Play Store
2. open the App,

Actual results:

All of my user data was gone. No tabs, bookmarks, saved passwords or other settings were available.

Expected results:

All user data should have been preserved.

----- Updated because original bug was closed in error
Please do not close this bug - there is a very specific sequence to reproduce the failure listsed above and reproduced here in case you are unable to see the prior comments:
Steps to reproduce:
Using a Galaxy S8 running Android 9:
Upgrade to Firefox 109.2.0 (Build #2015930059) using the Play Store
open the App,
Actual results:
All of my user data was gone. No tabs, bookmarks, saved passwords or other settings were available.
Expected results:
All user data should have been preserved.

However, this problem is very easy to understand. Essentially the code that is responsible for migrating prior versions of user data is broken/absent. In all well written (IMHO) software, if an upgrade is requested that is unable to understand and seamlessly migrate user metadata, such as bookmarks, etc, then before the upgrade is allowed to proceed (and thus destroy the user data), the user should be warned repeatedly that ALL DATA WILL BE LOST.

Of course, it would be best if migration code was included for much older versions of user metadata and thus upgrades would work even if the user had not upgraded Firefox for a very long time. The very least Firefox should do is NOT silently destroy all user data.

Comment 1

[jackyzy823]

Could you elaborate the version you upgraded from?

IIRC, the migration code for upgrading from old "Fennec" (version <= 68) to new "Fenix" was removed in about Firefox 100 . (As Mozilla thinks most users should have done migration in Firefox 100 , so they remove the code to reduce tech debt for maintaining)

So if you want to upgrade from version before 68 , you need to upgrade to new Fenix (version before 99) , then upgrade to the latest.

Related issue:
[1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/22489
[2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/pull/23651

Comment 2

[D Tyler]

It was probably <= 68, as I had to stop upgrading due to a loss of functionality of some critical (to me) plugins.

I understand the idea of not supporting direct upgrades from a very old version to a newer version, but it is never acceptable to destroy a user's data without a very clear warning that this upgrade may cause damage. If that warning had been in place, I would have migrated through one or more intermediate versions to get to 109.

Absent proper migration code, a warning that user data will be lost if the upgrade is continued is the least that Firefox could do to solve these issues. Bonus points for identify which intermediate release could be upgraded to without loss of any user data.

Also, in every upgrade process, a backup of ALL user data should be done in a form that allows them to revert to the previous version if the new, shiny version fails to function as expected.

Comment 3

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

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

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

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

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