777131 - Install of a web app that preloads the appcache - rare failure to create profile, reinstall of app does not fix the problem

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Web Apps, defect, P3)

Description

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Attachment: Profile Missing Error

Steps:

1. Go to http://people.mozilla.com/~fdesre/openwebapps/test.html
2. Install the app with appcache
3. Launch it

Expected:

The app should launch with no errors

Actual:

The app fails to launch. A profile missing error is thrown instead. See attached screenshot.

Comment 1

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Strangely enough, this only appears to be happening on my Windows 7 work machine. Checking my appdata folder, it appears that my profile for this app does not exist for some reason.

Tim - Any ideas what could cause my profile folder to not exist in this case?

Comment 2

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Jason, are you seeing any errors in the error console?

Comment 3

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to :Felipe Gomes [offline 20-24, slow resp. 25-28] from comment #2)
> Jason, are you seeing any errors in the error console?

Nope. Not seeing anything. It's reproducible on my machine though.

Comment 4

[Tim Abraldes [:TimAbraldes] [:tabraldes]]

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #1)
> Strangely enough, this only appears to be happening on my Windows 7 work
> machine. Checking my appdata folder, it appears that my profile for this app
> does not exist for some reason.
> 
> Tim - Any ideas what could cause my profile folder to not exist in this case?

I'm not sure what would cause this.  I tested this locally and was unable to reproduce.  Felipe (or whoever wrote our install-with-appcache-population) is more likely to be able to debug

Comment 5

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Every profile is actually stored into two folders: the Local part and the Roaming part. I'm guessing there's something left-over in the local part that is causing the initial profile creation to fail.

Jason, can you try the following steps:
 - uninstall the app
 - Look if there is still an app profile in %APPDATA%,  and %APPDATA%/../Local/
 - if there is, delete it
 - reinstall the app and try to launch it

(if you delete something, please make a copy of it before, in case that it fixes the problem and we can look later at what caused it)

Comment 6

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to :Felipe Gomes [offline 20-24, slow resp. 25-28] from comment #5)
> Every profile is actually stored into two folders: the Local part and the
> Roaming part. I'm guessing there's something left-over in the local part
> that is causing the initial profile creation to fail.
> 
> Jason, can you try the following steps:
>  - uninstall the app
>  - Look if there is still an app profile in %APPDATA%,  and
> %APPDATA%/../Local/
>  - if there is, delete it
>  - reinstall the app and try to launch it
> 
> (if you delete something, please make a copy of it before, in case that it
> fixes the problem and we can look later at what caused it)

Upon uninstalling the app and not deleting anything (note - there's no profile folder in my profile directory for the app), reinstalling the app and launching it still reproduced the same error.

Upon uninstalling the app and deleting %APPDATA%/http;people.mozilla.com folder entirely, reinstalling and launching the app, the app launched fine.

I've kept a copy of the folder on my machine. Let me see if I can attach it to this bug.

Comment 7

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Attachment: APPDATA app folder zip

Comment 8

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Ever since I did comment 6, I can no longer reproduce the bug I was seeing.

Comment 9

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

I've figured out a way to consistently reproduce this not necessarily from an end-user perspective, but at least allow us to debug the "app state:"

1. Install fabrice's app cache app here - http://people.mozilla.com/~fdesre/openwebapps/test.html
2. Delete the app profile in the Profiles directory in APPDATA
3. Launch the app (result - fails without the profile)
4. Reinstall the app and launch it (result - fails without the profile)

So my "guess" is that on install of the web app, something failed internally to not cause the profile folder to be generated in a strange corner case. Reinstalling an app does not fix the problem once you end up in this state. At a very minimum, we should be able to recover in this situation if we end up in it.

Any ideas? Or should we close as incomplete if we don't have enough information to conclude what the problem is?

Comment 10

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Marco: can you see if this is still happening?

Comment 11

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #9)
> I've figured out a way to consistently reproduce this not necessarily from
> an end-user perspective, but at least allow us to debug the "app state:"
> 
> 1. Install fabrice's app cache app here -
> http://people.mozilla.com/~fdesre/openwebapps/test.html
> 2. Delete the app profile in the Profiles directory in APPDATA
> 3. Launch the app (result - fails without the profile)
> 4. Reinstall the app and launch it (result - fails without the profile)
> 
> So my "guess" is that on install of the web app, something failed internally
> to not cause the profile folder to be generated in a strange corner case.
> Reinstalling an app does not fix the problem once you end up in this state.
> At a very minimum, we should be able to recover in this situation if we end
> up in it.
> 
> Any ideas? Or should we close as incomplete if we don't have enough
> information to conclude what the problem is?

To reproduce this, did you delete only the Profiles directory or also the profiles.ini file?
We create the profile directory only if the profiles.ini is not already present: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/profile/nsToolkitProfileService.cpp#654

So my guessing here is that you removed the Profiles directory but not the profiles.ini file and so nsToolkitProfileService::CreateDefaultProfileForApp throwed NS_ERROR_ALREADY_INITIALIZED (exception that we don't show to the user).

Comment 12

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Can't remember - this was filed a year ago.

Comment 13

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

Oh, I've looked at the archive you attached and the problem is actually that you had the profiles.ini file but the Profiles directory was empty.

I think we don't need to fix this problem.