658933 - Firefox Sync "Quota" doesn't show totals (or have 'uncheck-to-clear' option) for engines that my local profile isn't currently syncing

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 640000

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
 1. Go to sync panel of Firefox Prefs.
 2. Untick some engine (say, "Preferences") under "Sync My"

Now, let's say you want to clear all of your stale Preferences data in the cloud so that it won't get synced to new machines that you add to your Sync network...

 3. Manage Account | View Quota

ACTUAL RESULTS:
 "Preferences" isn't listed in Quota window (and hence isn't available to untick there, to clear server-side data).

EXPECTED RESULTS: "Preferences" should be listed in Quota window.


It looks like we only show Quota information if the service is enabled on the profile you're currently using.  That doesn't make sense to me -- it seems like we should add one more condition -- "ALSO list the engine if there's a nonzero amount of data for that engine stored on the server" (so that users can (a) see how much space it's using up and (b) clear it)

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Now, let's say you want to clear all of your stale Preferences data in the
> cloud so that it won't get synced to new machines that you add to your Sync
> network...

(FWIW, heycam ran into exactly this problem just now.  He had stale Preferences data in the cloud that kept getting synced to his phone.  He wanted to selectively clear this data from the cloud, but had no obvious way of doing it -- the "Quota" window didn't show it to him, because he'd already disabled preference-syncing on his desktop profile.)

Comment 2

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> It looks like we only show Quota information if the service is enabled on
> the profile you're currently using.  That doesn't make sense to me -- it
> seems like we should add one more condition -- "ALSO list the engine if
> there's a nonzero amount of data for that engine stored on the server" (so
> that users can (a) see how much space it's using up and (b) clear it)

Yes, we should show all collections that have data on the server, no matter whether they're enabled or even available locally. This is bug 640000, so I'm duping this bug to that.

(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > Now, let's say you want to clear all of your stale Preferences data in the
> > cloud so that it won't get synced to new machines that you add to your Sync
> > network...
> 
> (FWIW, heycam ran into exactly this problem just now.  He had stale
> Preferences data in the cloud that kept getting synced to his phone.  He
> wanted to selectively clear this data from the cloud, but had no obvious way
> of doing it -- the "Quota" window didn't show it to him, because he'd
> already disabled preference-syncing on his desktop profile.)

That shouldn't happen. When you disable an engine on one Sync-connected machine, it will get disabled on all other ones as well. How did he know his mobile was still syncing prefs? We don't expose any UI for that on Fennec.

Also note that when you disable an engine, we delete all its data from the server. So the case you're talking about shouldn't really happen

Comment 3

[Cameron McCormack (:heycam)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> That shouldn't happen. When you disable an engine on one Sync-connected
> machine, it will get disabled on all other ones as well. How did he know his
> mobile was still syncing prefs? We don't expose any UI for that on Fennec.

It wasn't that I saw it happening, I just wanted to ensure that it wouldn't happen.  I assumed that, since there was no UI on Fennec for selecting which data to sync, I would need to remove it from the server explicitly.

> Also note that when you disable an engine, we delete all its data from the
> server. So the case you're talking about shouldn't really happen

I got the impression that disabling syncing of a certain type of data just prevented it from being synced to/from that device only, not across all devices.  I guess that's wrong?

Comment 4

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I got the impression that disabling syncing of a certain type of data just
> prevented it from being synced to/from that device only, not across all
> devices.  I guess that's wrong?

Yep that's wrong. Those settings are account-wide.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > I got the impression that disabling syncing of a certain type of data just
> > prevented it from being synced to/from that device only, not across all
> > devices.  I guess that's wrong?
> 
> Yep that's wrong. Those settings are account-wide.

Ah, sorry -- I misled heycam, then.  (After talking with philikon on IRC -- turns out the per-engine on/off switch used to be device-specific, as I'd told heycam, but as of Sync 1.5, it changed to be global.)