732794 - Empty bookmarks tab on awesomescreen

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

With the latest Fennec nightly I get an empty bookmarks list in the Bookmarks tab when entering a new URL (I mean the view with the "Top Sites", "Bookmarks", "History" tabs). I'm not sure why that happens. Adding a bookmark seems to work fine as it says "Bookmark added" when tapping on the bookmark button and the star inside the bookmark button also changes to yellow.
I'm not sure if that's related: I've setup Sync like two weeks ago, but I removed the Sync account meanwhile again. IIRC the empty bookmarks list already happened with the Sync account being in place and nothing changed after removing the Sync account.
I can't tell if this is a regression or not.
The bookmarks list in my Aurora build works fine.

I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S2, Android 2.3.4

Comment 1

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Was about to file this; marking new since occurs for me too with:
Galaxy S2, Android 2.3.4, Fennec Native Nightly 13.0a1 2012-03-04

Unlike comment 0, I don't have sync set up / have never used it.

Comment 2

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Are you talking about entering a search keyboard and having the query narrow down a result listing your bookmark, or are you talking about visibly seeing your list of bookmarks under the bookmarks tab? Have you tried looking under 'Mobile Bookmarks' to see your bookmark?

If it's the former, than yes, I also see this. I visit bing.com, bookmark it, clear-history, head into the awesome-screen and begin to type 'bing', and I never see my bookmark as a result.

--
Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0.2)
Nightly (03/04)
Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:13.0) Gecko/13.0 Firefox/13.0a1

Comment 3

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Also note that synced desktop bookmarks wont be query-able just yet, bug 731217.

Comment 4

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

I mean the list of bookmarks under the bookmarks tab. It's just empty, I see no mobile bookmarks list. The other issue you mentioned is Bug 721731 afaik.

Comment 5

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Attachment: Screenshot

Comment 6

[:Margaret Leibovic]

An empty bookmarks tab like this means that your bookmarks folder structure is broken somehow, meaning the special folders ("Mobile Bookmarks", etc.) have a parent folder that isn't the special root folder we're using for the first view in the bookmarks tab.

Frank, you say you set up sync a while ago but then got rid of it. That initial set-up could have messed this up, since it may have been before patches to fix this issue landed.

Ed, you say you've never used sync. Do you remember doing a profile migration from a XUL fennec build? That may have caused this problem.

Is this happening with the latest Nightly builds? Lucas introduced some database migration code that should fix up these bookmarks when you upgrade to a newer version.

Comment 7

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

(In reply to Margaret Leibovic [:margaret] from comment #6)
> Ed, you say you've never used sync. Do you remember doing a profile
> migration from a XUL fennec build? That may have caused this problem.
> 
> Is this happening with the latest Nightly builds? 

I've only ever had Native Fennec installed on this phone (I only got the phone in Jan).

It still occurs on the 2012-03-05 Nightly (built from https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/433cfbd2a0da).

Comment 8

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Anything in the ADB log captured during start-up and access of the bookmarks screen?

Comment 9

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

I've used the latest nightly and never used a XUL fennec build. I did not see anything related in ADB log on start-up (except the sqlite code not finding some WriteAhead function or something like that). Unfortunately I managed to wipe my profile as I did not know/expect that uninstalling the nightly will also remove my nightly profile. Now the issue is gone..

Comment 10

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Attachment: Logcat output

I killed Nightly, started dumping the logcat output, launched Nightly, tapped in the awesomebar, switched to the bookmarks tab, then stopped logging. There doesn't seem to be anything of use in the log, but I'm not exactly a great one to judge, so attaching just in case.

I still can't access my bookmarks, so can someone help me to provide the info to debug this please.

Comment 11

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Ed Morley [:edmorley] from comment #10)
> Created attachment 603131 [details]
> Logcat output
> 
> I killed Nightly, started dumping the logcat output, launched Nightly,
> tapped in the awesomebar, switched to the bookmarks tab, then stopped
> logging. There doesn't seem to be anything of use in the log, but I'm not
> exactly a great one to judge, so attaching just in case.
> 
> I still can't access my bookmarks, so can someone help me to provide the
> info to debug this please.

If you've never set up sync or a profile migration, I'm not sure what could have caused this. Do you happen to remember when you first noticed this? 

Lucas, do you have any ideas?

If you set up sync, code might run to fix up your bookmarks folders, but I'm not sure of that. However, I think we should try to understand how you got into this state in the first place.

Comment 12

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

(In reply to Margaret Leibovic [:margaret] from comment #11)
> If you've never set up sync or a profile migration, I'm not sure what could
> have caused this. Do you happen to remember when you first noticed this? 

I'm really sorry, I've tended to use top sites, so haven't had need to switch to the bookmarks tab much. It's been broken for at least a week/perhaps two, and the last time I remember it definitely working was at the very end of Jan, when I was testing the fix for bug 721125 and continually returning to that bookmarked page.

I hadn't reported it until now, since I'm sure I had read something in the Mobile meeting wiki minutes a few weeks back about transitioning from the system DB to the normal one, so bookmarks/sync/places items in general might be a bit screwy. Given the entire bookmarks tab was blank, I'd just presumed it was still being worked on (whoops).

I've previously pressed the "set up sync button" to see what the UI looked like (and also visited the advanced section within), but have never connected it with my dormant-for-a-year desktop sync account.

As part of helping kats with bug 721125, I installed a try build alongside Nightly which was uninstalled immediately after. I'm presuming this could have had no effect, since it uses a different profile yeah?

I also seem to recall using the menu -> settings -> clear history button 2-3 weeks ago, to try and get top sites to actually provide relevant listings. Again, I'm not sure if this could have had any adverse effect on my bookmarks.

(Sorry for the imprecise recollection, not much help I know...)

Comment 13

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to help diagnose this further?

I'd quite like my bookmarks back! :-)

Comment 14

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Ed Morley [:edmorley] from comment #13)
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to help diagnose this
> further?
> 
> I'd quite like my bookmarks back! :-)

Does this still happen on the latest version of Nightly? Even more changes have landed since we last commented in this bug. If so, maybe we should take a look at your db to see what might be going wrong.

Comment 15

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Yeah unfortunately still occurs on http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4bdae514b9be

Comment 16

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

I've found a way to reproduce this problem using Aurora build:
0. Backup Aurora profile and then uninstall to remove existing Aurora profile
1. Install last 12.0a2 build 2012-03-13
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/2012/03/2012-03-13-04-20-10-mozilla-aurora-android/fennec-12.0a2.en-US.android-arm.apk
2. Create a few bookmarks
3. Install latest Aurora nightly via .apk or inapp update, both should work. I'm not sure if the latest nightly is required, sometimes I was able to reproduce with nightlies older than today's build.
4. Launch new Aurora nghtly and observe that bookmarks are gone

Comment 17

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

I checked again, this broke with the 2012-03-25 Aurora nightly. When I update from 2012-03-13 to 2012-03-24 everything is fine. When I update from 2012-03-13 to 2012-03-25 the bookmarks tab is empty. Not sure though if my original description of the Bug in Comment 0 is caused by the same check-in (just on mozilla-central).

Comment 18

[JP Rosevear [:jpr]]

A lot of bookmark changes have occurred in the last month - is this still happening?

Comment 19

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

I resorting to uninstalling/reinstalling Nightly so that I could use bookmarks again (they work now, albeit reset). I didn't hear back as to what other debug info I could provide & with a non-rooted phone was unsure as to how to get the DB off, so I don't really have any way of helping any more, sorry.

Comment 20

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Check Comment 16. This bug might cause problems for users updating from older releases. But I'm not sure about that, someone would need to test.

Comment 21

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

I tried again the steps to reproduce in Comment 16, the bug still happens when updating from the Aurora nightly in Step 1 to the current Aurora nightly. So I think someone would need to test what happens when updating from the last release build to the current Aurora or mozilla-central build (if this is possible? never tried if that works properly currently).

Comment 22

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Frank Wein [:mcsmurf] from comment #21)
> I tried again the steps to reproduce in Comment 16, the bug still happens
> when updating from the Aurora nightly in Step 1 to the current Aurora
> nightly.

Could you upload logs from this process?

Comment 23

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Do you need the full log or only the error part of it?
Here's the part which probably shows the error, this one happens after launching the current Aurora nightly:
05-05 10:00:44.250: I/dalvikvm(19187): Could not find method android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.enableWriteAheadLogging, referenced from method org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.onOpen
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.migrateBookmarkFolder(BrowserProvider.java:646)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.migrateBookmarksTable(BrowserProvider.java:702)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.migrateBookmarksTable(BrowserProvider.java:681)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.upgradeDatabaseFrom1to2(BrowserProvider.java:761)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.onUpgrade(BrowserProvider.java:859)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider.getDatabaseHelperForProfile(BrowserProvider.java:977)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider.getReadableDatabase(BrowserProvider.java:1016)
05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider.query(BrowserProvider.java:1538)

Not posting the full log for now as I'm not sure if there's any private information in it.

Comment 24

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Thanks, that's really helpful!

It looks like some of our database migration code is the culprit. Looking at hg blame, the bad line was added long ago by bug 704490. However, I'm confused because it's inside an |if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11)|, so that should not be running on your Galaxy S2 w/ 2.3.4.

I don't think we're too worried about fixing a problem caused by a migration that already happened, but this sounds like a problem that could come up again, so we should figure out why this is happening and fix it!

Comment 25

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Dunno about the first line, I think the problem is actually "05-05 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.migrateBookmarkFolder(BrowserProvider.java:646)" and so on. The first line in the log is not related to the second line, is it?

Comment 26

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Frank Wein [:mcsmurf] from comment #25)
> Dunno about the first line, I think the problem is actually "05-05
> 10:00:44.280: E/Database(19187): 	at
> org.mozilla.fennec_aurora.db.BrowserProvider$DatabaseHelper.
> migrateBookmarkFolder(BrowserProvider.java:646)" and so on. The first line
> in the log is not related to the second line, is it?

Hm, yeah, I guess they aren't related. It's odd that the first line in that stack doesn't have an actual error message though. Looks like the DB error could have been caused by the insert here:
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/file/tip/mobile/android/base/db/BrowserProvider.java.in#l646

But without a more informative error message it's tough to tell what happened.