Automatic profile repair and self-service
David Tenser
users? That's the gist of the discussion that originally started in bug
552505 but is better suited in here.
Everyone here is aware of the problems many users have with old and
sometimes corrupted profiles causing Firefox to load slowly, not load at
all, or not work properly. I've seen real cases where e.g. starting up
Firefox takes over 3 minutes due to something not being right in a
profile. Creating a new profile and migrating the data manually (or,
more recently, using Firefox Sync) seems to always fix the issue.
In the best case, users with these types of problems end up on SUMO and
follow non-straightforward troubleshooting instructions like
https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting. However, others
complain publicly on Twitter or blogs about Firefox being bloated/slow
instead, without finding the solution. Worst case, some stop using
Firefox altogether (we don't know how many).
Supporting users with these types of problems is difficult, because the
steps involved to recover from a broken profile is not straightforward.
Even the most basic step -- starting the profile manager -- is sometimes
too complicated for our users.
While it's great that we have support articles covering these topics on
SUMO, the Best Service is really No Service (tm). This particular
problem with damaged/old profiles is just one example of where I think
we could preempt the need for users to visit SUMO for troubleshooting.
Proposal:
1) Make Firefox detect and repair common profile problems automatically.
2) Make it easy for users to enter a maintenance mode (Safe Mode?) and
troubleshoot on their own without having to go to SUMO.
#1: Whenever it's possible for Firefox to detect that something's wrong
with a profile, it should attempt to fix it automatically. Maybe
Firefox could detect when it's unreasonably slow to load? Maybe the
sqlite files can be checked for integrity? Maybe prefs.js can be checked
to see if it's writable? When Firefox is installed and a profile already
exists, maybe it can automatically "clean" it (by re-creating the data
in fresh files)?
#2: I doubt that it would always be possible for Firefox to detect if
something is wrong, so having a way to clean/repair your profile
manually under the Help/Troubleshooting menu would also make a big
difference. Maybe the UI for this would reside in the Safe Mode dialog,
in which case there should be a straightforward way to start Safe Mode
from the Troubleshooting menu.
Aside from making the Firefox experience better for many users, this
would of course help SUMO a great deal too, as the most difficult and
potentially frustrating issues (losing your private data, or not being
able to use Firefox) would either be fixed automatically, or possible to
fix on your own.
Thoughts and feedback? Is this thing even doable? Thanks for reading.
- David
Soufian Jaouani
> How can we make troubleshooting slow, corrupt profiles simpler for
> users? That's the gist of the discussion that originally started in bug
> 552505 but is better suited in here.
>
> Everyone here is aware of the problems many users have with old and
> sometimes corrupted profiles causing Firefox to load slowly, not load at
> all, or not work properly. I've seen real cases where e.g. starting up
> Firefox takes over 3 minutes due to something not being right in a
> profile. Creating a new profile and migrating the data manually (or,
> more recently, using Firefox Sync) seems to always fix the issue.
>
> In the best case, users with these types of problems end up on SUMO and
Yeah Great idea. I was thinking Firefox could have a Power On Self
Test.
Load the core, prepare which files to load, check if they're sane. And
if they're not, maybe a migration-in-progress got stuck and failed? Or
files may be corrupted. In these cases you could try to restore a
backup or recreate them.
And if there's no way Firefox could repair the profile, tell the user,
make him/her report this issue and recreate a new profile.
David Tenser
> It's obviously a great idea. What we need to know is: what are the things that such a cleansing/self test system should be looking for? Put another way: what profile issues are known to cause performance problems with Firefox?
The tricky part is that in order to know this, one probably needs direct
access to profile data, which users rarely want to submit. We'll keep an
eye out for it in live chat, though.
A good start for the self test system might be checking to make sure
prefs.js is writable, and checking the integrity of sqlite files.
The actual cleansing functionality (which doesn't necessarily need to
wait for the automatic self test functionality) is more straightforward
and could work something like this:
1. Create a new profile.
2. Import private data (bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc) and
optionally add-ons from the current/old profile to the new one.
3. Update profiles.ini to point to the new one.
johnjbarton
> How can we make troubleshooting slow, corrupt profiles simpler for
> users? That's the gist of the discussion that originally started in bug
> 552505 but is better suited in here.
>
> Everyone here is aware of the problems many users have with old and
> sometimes corrupted profiles causing Firefox to load slowly, not load at
> all, or not work properly. I've seen real cases where e.g. starting up
> Firefox takes over 3 minutes due to something not being right in a
> profile.
I have to deal with this quite a lot for Firebug. I'd guess more than
half of the "bug" reports on Firebug are not bugs after a new profile.
> Creating a new profile and migrating the data manually (or,
> more recently, using Firefox Sync) seems to always fix the issue.
This also means that if intermediate options were available, users would
try them and over time we'd know where to look to find the cause of
these problems.
Just enumerate the ways a profile differs from clean:
bookmarks. Unlikely to be a problem
extensions. less of a problem than some think
database values. not likely?
preferences <-- Here's something.
others?
And for each offer a way to reset and retry. Just having some
intermediate path for more experienced users would be a great start. We
know from them that new-profile works.
We made progress in Firebug by offering a "reset all options" feature.
jjb
David Tenser
> On 2010-05-31 22:17, Mike Beltzner wrote:
>> It's obviously a great idea. What we need to know is: what are the
>> things that such a cleansing/self test system should be looking for?
>> Put another way: what profile issues are known to cause performance
>> problems with Firefox?
>
> The tricky part is that in order to know this, one probably needs direct
> access to profile data, which users rarely want to submit. We'll keep an
> eye out for it in live chat, though.
>
> A good start for the self test system might be checking to make sure
> prefs.js is writable, and checking the integrity of sqlite files.
Another file to check for is the integrity of localstore.rdf. We have an
article on SUMO for problems related to toolbars resetting, etc:
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Toolbar+keeps+resetting. I was just
hit by this myself recently.
The solution is to start Safe Mode and restore Toolbars and Controls. (I
don't know the related bug for this and whether it would be easier to
fix that bug, though.)
Michael Lefevre
> Another file to check for is the integrity of localstore.rdf. We have an
> article on SUMO for problems related to toolbars resetting, etc:
> https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Toolbar+keeps+resetting. I was just
> hit by this myself recently.
>
> The solution is to start Safe Mode and restore Toolbars and Controls. (I
> don't know the related bug for this and whether it would be easier to
> fix that bug, though.)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319196 is the old bug with
a load of comments and votes and CCs and stuff (and a link to the SUMO
article), but I guess the "localstore.rdf kills ponies" bug might lead
to an actual fix - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=559505
Michael