526300 - Weave sync on a new Mac profile messes up the Places database

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[(no longer active)]

Attachment: Screenshot

This is on a new profile with a Mac 10.6 system running m-c nightlies.  I installed Weave and started a full sync, and I saw that more than half of the bookmarks on my bookmarks toolbar are not synced to this profile.  They are in the cloud, because I've successfully synced them onto a new profile on Linux.

And today I noticed something very strange in the Library window: the History node has moved under the Bookmarks node, and I think it's been Weave which has somehow messed up the Places db.  See the screenshot for how it looks.  FWIW, no part of the Places data has been synced up completely, for example I don't have all my bookmarks, all my tags, and all pages in my history.

I decided to hold on to this Places db and profile in case that can help someone with debugging for now.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

BTW, I have tried "Starting over" and it didn't help at all.

Comment 2

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

What version of Weave are you using?  Please note that 0.7 does a rather slow partial sync, without any useful ordering, so it takes a while to get back to normal sync.

Start Over doesn't really do much right now, fwiw.

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

history inside unsorted bookmarks?
That can happen if "history" query becomes orphan, so if the left pane root is not synced correctly. When manteinance will see that there is an orphan item it will move it to unsorted bookmarks to prevent dataloss.
But ideally the left pane root should not be synced at all.
Dunno if that could help, but all containers that should not be backed up are marked with a special annotation "places/excludeFromBackup", so when we meet one during a backup we skip it and all of its contents. The left pane is recreated if it's missing or broken, so there should be no point in syncing it, you could use the above anno to skip it.

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

We are checking for property == places/excludeFromBackup onItemChanged, but potentially we're still creating the item from somewhere else. Actually, I suppose first sync will bypass the onItemChanged completely because it'll try to sync "everything".

"Everything" consists of the children under bookmarksMenu, toolbar, and unfiledBookmarks (but not tags or placesRoot). Is it possible to reach those items from those 3 folders?

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

no, left pane is at the same level as menu/toolbar/unfiled, it is child of Places root.

Comment 6

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> What version of Weave are you using?  Please note that 0.7 does a rather slow
> partial sync, without any useful ordering, so it takes a while to get back to
> normal sync.
> 
> Start Over doesn't really do much right now, fwiw.

I'm using 0.7.  I remember I read something to this effect that weave development versions use a different server farm, so I guess if I switch to 0.8preN, then my data won't be on the respective servers.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Currently not correct at all.

Comment 8

[(no longer active)]

I just upgraded to 0.8 and Weave did an automatic sync, and I did a manual one after that, but things have not changed a bit.

Comment 9

[(no longer active)]

FWIW, I just synced with this profile on a Windows install (inside a VM) of Firefox 3.6 Beta and Weave 0.8, and I observed the same problem.  It seems like the data stored on the server is somehow corrupted.  :(

Comment 10

[Ragavan S [:rags]]

Do you have all of your data locally?

If so, can you start over by wiping the server and doing a fresh sync with the 1.0b1 client? 

We've fixed a lot of the incremental sync bugs with this version, so it would be good to know if we left something out.

Comment 11

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

FYI, you can wipe with this in the Error Console:

Components.utils.import('resource://weave/service.js'); Weave.Service.wipeServer()

Comment 12

[(no longer active)]

This seemed to solve the problem on an affected profile.  Of course, I don't have all my history on that profile, but the missing entries are mostly old ones, and I think that Weave now gives those a lower priority in a sync, so I might just have to wait.

But do you have any idea about the underlying problem which caused this bug?

Comment 13

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

We haven't been able to reproduce this, not blocking 1.0.

Comment 14

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Haven't been able to replicate this, resolving WFM, please file a new bug if there's STR.