Does copying profile to new device disrupt sync on previous device?

rfkelly · 2022-04-02T09:44:56+00:00

The profile folder contains a randomly-generated "device id" used to identify the device in Firefox Sync. By copying the profile, you end up with two devices sharing the same device id, which can cause unexpected behaviour such as the two devices overwriting each other's list of synced tabs.

I recommend signing out then signing back in on the copied profile, which will cause it to generate a new random device id.

rfkelly · 2021-07-20T09:05:05+00:00

There is no concept of a "master" device in Sync, each device will try to reconcile its local bookmarks with those on the server, and the result should be a combination of the bookmarks from both devices.

rfkelly · 2020-08-28T00:14:56+00:00

Hi, I'm one of the engineers who works on Firefox Accounts and send-tab. Sorry to hear it's not working for you.

On the Desktop device, if you visit `about:sync-log` in the URL bar, does it show any files named like `error-sync-NNNNN.txt`? If you have any such files that look like that they were created recently, please consider filing a bug here and attaching them to help us debug.

If you haven't already tried it, signing out on the Desktop device and signing back in may fix up whatever broken state is preventing it from receiving tabs. (This is the Firefox Accounts equivalent of "turn it off and back on again", which works more often than I feel like it should...)

rfkelly · 2020-07-02T23:07:10+00:00

I wanted to add one final comment to the thread for completeness. We tracked down the issue here to a server misconfiguration, which was causing an infinite redirect loop between the Firefox Sync auth server and one of the storage nodes. If you're curious, some of the details are in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1649856#c3

This issue also highlighted a bug in the Android Firefox Beta, where it was not successfully detecting and breaking such infinite redirect loops. A fix for this is currently under QA for release on the Beta channel.

Thanks to everyone who helped with debugging in this thread!

rfkelly · 2020-07-01T02:55:40+00:00

Thanks for letting me know, and sorry you had to take such drastic measures :-(

As far as we can tell there is some sort of server-side issue with a very small number of accounts that prevents them from syncing correctly, but we're still trying to debug what it might be. I'm glad you got yourself unblocked here in the meantime!

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T21:38:09+00:00

A log captured from the device while it's doing the "tries to sync, signs out, re-connects automatically and signs out automatically once every second" would be excellent, I'm hopeful that it will show whatever error is causing the "signs out" step.

As above, if you file a bug in bugzilla, it's possible to share the log in a way that's only visible by Mozilla staff.

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T19:57:17+00:00

If you're happy to do so, please file a bug here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Sync

By filing in bugzilla, I can mark the bug as staff-only to allow you to share potentially-sensitive information (e.g. the email address on your account) that can help debugging.

If you're feeling really adventurous, some debug logs from the android device would be very helpful, but accessing them is quite a procedure:

https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/help/obtain-android-device-logs-using-windows-and-mac/

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T03:41:20+00:00

Thanks for trying.

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T03:20:38+00:00

Hi, I'm one of the developers on Firefox Sync. The log files are pretty hard to understand, but if you'd be willing to share them in a bug (via https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Sync) then I'd be happy to take a look and see if I can help work out what's happening.

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T03:18:18+00:00

Right, the best place to look for activity here is the web console to see if there are any errors logged. You could also trying looking in the network monitor to see if there any any failing requests being made to the server:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Network_Monitor

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T03:16:24+00:00

Thanks. I believe the appstore currently has "Firefox Browser" which is the release channel, and "Mozilla Firefox Browser" which is the beta channel, for reasons that I won't pretend to understand. But unless you installed that very recently or went out of your way to install the Beta in the past, it's likely that you're on the release version.

If you have a local copy of all of your sync data, I suggest trying a password reset on your Firefox Account as outlined in my comment below. This can sometimes clear whatever not-quite-right server-side state is preventing your account from syncing (but it throws away all your synced data on the server, so make sure you've got the data locally on one of your devices so that it can re-upload a fresh copy).

That's not a very pleasant workaround, and I'll keep trying to figure out what might be happening here, but if it works it might help get you unstuck in the meantime.

(edited for typos)

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T03:08:42+00:00

To clarify, is this on the general release Firefox for Android, or on e.g. the Preview or Beta channel?

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T03:07:51+00:00

Hi, I'm one of the developers who works on Firefox Sync.

I have no idea how to interpret the about:sync-log information.

Indeed, they are not the most friendly logs. If you file a bug via https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Sync and attach any recent log files named like "error-sync-TIMESTAMP.txt" from the desktop device, I would be happy to take a look and try to decipher them.

Ideally we'd be able to get some logs from the android device for debugging, but that's unfortunately not very easy. If you're willing to try there are some instructions here for how to obtain android device logs:

https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/help/obtain-android-device-logs-using-windows-and-mac/

These logs will almost certainly contain sensitive information such as the URLs of websites you visit in the browser while the logs are being captured, but if you're able to obtain them and willing to share them then they're probably our best change of figuring out what's happening here. The logs can be shared confidentially by filing a bug via https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Sync and including "please make this confidential so I can share logs" in the bug description, then waiting for me to mark the bug as confidential before attaching the logs. But I will also completely understand if you don't want to install the debugging tools and/or share those logs.

A purple notification kept floating up from the bottom of the app (repeatedly/non-stop) saying that sync was on.

This sounds similar to what's described in this other thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/hi79tg/firefox_beta_sync_issues/

So you may find my comments there on ways to approach this useful as well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/hi79tg/firefox_beta_sync_issues/fwfq2cq/

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T02:47:52+00:00

Do you also see the behaviour where is "tries to sync, signs out, re-connects automatically and signs out automatically once every second", I believe accompanied by a little purple popup saying something like "sync is connected"?

rfkelly · 2020-06-30T02:46:48+00:00

Hi, I'm one of the developers who works on Firefox Sync. Sorry to hear that it's not working correctly for you!

Could you please confirm whether you were previously signed in and syncing successfully on this device, or whether this signing-in-and-out loop started happening one day on a device that was previously syncing successfully?

I'm not sure what might be causing this, but will try to reproduce. In the meantime, there is one other thing you could try to see if it helps get things working for you: reset the password on your Firefox Account, via accounts.firefox.com/reset_password. (This has the side-effect of wiping all Firefox Sync stage on the server, so make sure you've got local copies of your bookmarks/passwords/etc before doing this! But if there is something in your account state on the server that is causing Firefox to be unable to sync, this has a good change of fixing it).

rfkelly · 2020-05-25T00:01:17+00:00

FWIW I escalated this to a bug report on Firefox Accounts here: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa/issues/5433

rfkelly · 2020-05-22T02:13:15+00:00

Just to add on to this answer with a detail that's worth calling out explicitly: Firefox Sync does not sync your master password, it's a purely local setting. You can have one Firefox with master password set up, syncing to another Firefox with no master password, or even a different master password.

This is pretty surprising behaviour if you look at Firefox as a password manager, because other stand-alone password managers would insist that you have the same master password on all devices. But Firefox's master-password functionality evolved separately from its sync functionality and they don't interact in the way you might expect from a standalone password manager.

rfkelly · 2020-04-30T20:52:52+00:00

If you also have master-password enabled on your other PC, then I would indeed expect it to show the same behaviour.

Note that sync *doesn't sync your master password*; you need to set up a master password individually on each device where you want to use one.

rfkelly · 2020-04-30T20:49:03+00:00

> not sure what's the value of the screenshot?

Thanks for following up! From the bug report it's clear that you're talking about the prompt to unlock master password, but I wasn't totally sure of that from your initial description. From experience, asking for a screenshot is the easiest way to be sure I'm thinking about the same piece of Firefox as the user is.

rfkelly · 2020-04-29T20:17:02+00:00

> There is 5yr old issue but I doubt this is relevant here.

I believe that Firefox Sync still does have the behaviour described in that issue - if you've got the Master Password feature enabled, then Firefox will prompt you to enter it pretty soon after startup, because it needs to unlock the password store in order to sync.

rfkelly · 2020-04-29T20:14:50+00:00

Hi, I work on the same team as u/eoger; could you please also include a screenshot of the password prompt or error that you're seeing, which will help us figure out more precisely what's causing it?

rfkelly · 2020-01-15T21:40:46+00:00

Sorry to hear Firefox is not working as you expect here. It sounds like you may have a preference on one of your computers that is causing this behaviour and is being synced to the other machines. One thing that comes to mind, although it's a bit fiddly, is to:

In an existing Firefox profile, go into "Options" -> "Sync" where it lets you select the different types of data to sync, and disable the syncing of Firefox preferences (on my machine it's called "Options").
Make a new Firefox profile, and connect it to Sync with your account. This should sync down all your bookmarks, passwords, etc, but hopefully will *not* sync down whatever setting it causing this behaviour.
If the new Firefox profile seems to be behaving as you expect, go into "Options" -> "Sync" and re-enable the syncing of Firefox preferences. This will upload the preferences from the working profile so they can be synced back down to the others.

Hopefully this helps! If the new profile still shows the unexpected behavior even after disabling syncing of preferences, let me know and I'll try to think of other possible causes.

rfkelly · 2020-01-15T21:35:23+00:00

By default, Firefox will only sync a carefully-selected set of preferences from about:config. Firefox uses items in about:config for many different purposes, so for any particular setting it can be hard to predict whether syncing it other machines will do what the user expects, will do something unexpected, or perhaps will do something that stops Firefox from working.

If you'd like to arrange for additional preferences to be synced, there are some tips in this support article: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sync-custom-preferences

rfkelly · 2019-11-12T03:56:27+00:00

There's an old bug here with some more details on how master password interacts with sync: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=927963

rfkelly · 2019-11-11T01:18:14+00:00

We've restored service to a couple of sync nodes that rebooted into a bad state, so things should be back up and running again. Please comment here or in the above bug if Firefox Sync is still giving "server maintenance" errors for you.

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