Status of Firefox vs NFSv4

[Andrea Venturoli]

Hello.

I've got my home on an NFSv4 server and FireFox ESR keeps losing cookie
settings, form data, saved logins, etc... (but not history).
This setup used to work, but started misbehaving a few monhs ago.
BTW, ThunderBird works perfecly.

What's the status wrt to NFS?

I've seen: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433129
Most of the comments are several years old.
Is this still relevant/fresh?

In any case, I tried adding storage.nfs_filesystem=true, but it improved
things just a little (i.e. I loose settings every 4/5 restars, instead
of every restart).
Of course I trashed my profile and started anew, but the problem persists.

TIA.

[😉 Good Guy 😉]

On 16/11/2020 10:13, Andrea Venturoli wrote:

What's the status wrt to NFS?

Firefox is just an APP that runs on popular operating system such as Windows, Mac and Linux (most versions).

If you are having problems with cookie settings, Form data etc then you might want to check your settings in Firefox.  I don't see why a server would be involved here.  Your website on the server should have a setting to store Cookies on client machines so have a look there first.  Are you having problems only on one website running on that server or is this a problem globally such as Google cookies and Google Form data etc?   If it is globally then clearly something is wrong with your FF settings.

What is the version of your FF?  Also, how sure are you that NFS is actively supported by its developers?  Have you tried contacting them?

--

With over 1.2 billion devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

[Grant Taylor]

My understanding is that Andrea is asking about having the Firefox
profile reside on an NFS server.

On 11/16/20 11:41 AM, 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:
> Firefox is just an APP that runs on popular operating system such as
> Windows, Mac and Linux (most versions).

Yes, but some applications can be sensitive to the type of file system
they are installed onto. E.g. local drive vs network drive (e.g. NFS).

> If you are having problems with cookie settings, Form data etc then you
> might want to check your settings in Firefox.  I don't see why a server
> would be involved here.

Quit simply because the profile lives on an NFS file server. (Think
mapped network drive.)

> Your website on the server should have a setting to store Cookies on
> client machines so have a look there first. Are you having problems
> only on one website running on that server or is this a problem
> globally such as Google cookies and Google Form data etc? If it is
> globally then clearly something is wrong with your FF settings.

It sounds like Andrea is having problems that when Firefox is closed,
the cookie related data in the profile is getting corrupted.

> What is the version of your FF?  Also, how sure are you that NFS is
> actively supported by its developers?  Have you tried contacting them?

My understanding is that Andrea started this thread as a general first
pass to see if this is a known problem, likely before going to the
Firefox developers.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Dave Royal]

Interesting bug. Who'd have thought sqlite wouldn't work over NFS.

The bug's still open, posted to 6 mths ago. I would poke it and see if
any of the experts respond. Are you using a non-Mozilla build?


--
(Remove numerics from email address)

[James Moe]

On 11/16/20 3:13 AM, Andrea Venturoli wrote:

> This setup used to work, but started misbehaving a few monhs ago.
> BTW, ThunderBird works perfecly.
>

Any updates to your host or the server in the last few months?

--
James Moe
jmm-list at sohnen-moe dot com
Think.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/16/20 7:41 PM, 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:

> If you are having problems with cookie settings, Form data etc then you
> might want to check your settings in Firefox.

I think settings in FireFox are fine.
As I said, I also tried starting with a new profile, so now I have
almost default settings.

> I don't see why a server would be involved here.

Simply because the files FireFox writes to are on that server.

> Your website on the server should have a
> setting to store Cookies on client machines so have a look there first.

I think you are confusing webserver and fileserver (NFS).

> Are you having problems only on one website

No.

> What is the version of your FF?

78.5.0esr.

> Also, how sure are you that NFS is actively supported by its developers?

I am convinced of this.

> Have you tried contacting them?

Yes, I'm moving in several directions, so I wrote on their mailing list
at the same time I wrote on this newsgroup.
I got no answer yet, though.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/16/20 8:24 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:

> It sounds like Andrea is having problems that when Firefox is closed,
> the cookie related data in the profile is getting corrupted.

Exactly.
(Though I'm not sure this corruption happens on closing).

> My understanding is that Andrea started this thread as a general first
> pass to see if this is a known problem, likely before going to the
> Firefox developers.

More or less.

I'm trying to gather info to understand if it's a (known?) problem in
FireFox or if I should investigate the underlying database or OS.
Since ThunderBird works perfectly, however, I'm more inclined on blaming
FireFox.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/16/20 8:55 PM, Dave Royal wrote:

> Interesting bug. Who'd have thought sqlite wouldn't work over NFS.

I'm not sure if this is ironic :)
Anyway, SQLite FAQ says

Can multiple applications or multiple instances of the same
application access a single database file at the same time?

SQLite uses reader/writer locks to control access to the database.
But use caution: this locking mechanism might not work correctly if the
database file is kept on an NFS filesystem. This is because fcntl() file
locking is broken on many NFS implementations.



Now, this might hint to a problem, but:
A) I'm not accessing the same database from different locations, unless
differente FireFox windows/tabs count as multiple instances. In this
case I believe it would be a FireFox problem;
B) I'm not aware my NFS implementation being a broken one;
C) As I said, ThunderBird, which also uses SQLite and whose profile also
lives in NFS, works perfectly.

> Are you using a non-Mozilla build?

Yes. Given no Mozilla build exists for FreeBSD, I'm building it myself
(using the official FreeBSD port).

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/17/20 2:27 AM, James Moe wrote:

> Any updates to your host or the server in the last few months?

Sure.
Last one was from FreeBSD 12.1 to 12.2 in the last weeks.
I'm not sure it was a problem back at the time I was using FreeBSD 11,
but it was long ago.

Thanks to all who answered.

[Dave Royal]

On 18 Nov 2020 08:35:28 +0100 Andrea Venturoli wrote:
>[On 11/16/20 8:55 PM, Dave Royal wrote:]

>
>> Interesting bug. Who'd have thought sqlite wouldn't work over NFS.
>
>I'm not sure if this is ironic :)
>

No, I was genuinely surprised. In my experience NFS disks behave exactly
like local ones - but I don't have an sqlite db on one.

I read all that about the locks. All new to me.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/18/20 10:12 AM, Dave Royal wrote:

> No, I was genuinely surprised. In my experience NFS disks behave exactly
> like local ones - but I don't have an sqlite db on one.

Me too.

I've got my home on NFS for... I don't remember exactly, probably almost
20 years... and FF only start misbehaving since months.

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/18/20 2:12 AM, Dave Royal wrote:
> No, I was genuinely surprised. In my experience NFS disks behave
> exactly like local ones - but I don't have an sqlite db on one.
>
> I read all that about the locks. All new to me.

I've long known that there can be some issues with NFS on occasion,
specifically around file locking.

Though I thought they were more about the locks being properly presented
to different hosts accessing common data than about a singular host
accessing the same data from multiple programs.

I've bumped into locking issues with things like Maildir and mail spools
living on NFS. Usually, it's perfectly fine if a single client is
accessing a set of files. E.g. Alice accesses /NFS/alice and Bob
accesses /NFS/bob.

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/18/20 12:30 AM, Andrea Venturoli wrote:
> Exactly.

;-)

> (Though I'm not sure this corruption happens on closing).

Are you by chance trying to run Firefox on multiple computers using the
same profile directory at the same time?

I know that Firefox isn't happy with that.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/18/20 6:13 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:

> Are you by chance trying to run Firefox on multiple computers using the
> same profile directory at the same time?

No.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/18/20 6:11 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:

> I've long known that there can be some issues with NFS on occasion,
> specifically around file locking.

There's also an issue with documentation, since NFSv4 seems to be quite
different from v3 (but it's hard to read bug reports/FAQ/etc... who
simply refer to NFS and understand if what they say applies).

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/18/20 10:31 AM, Andrea Venturoli wrote:
> There's also an issue with documentation, since NFSv4 seems to be quite
> different from v3 (but it's hard to read bug reports/FAQ/etc... who
> simply refer to NFS and understand if what they say applies).

#true

NFSv4 is vastly different than NFSv3/2/1 in that v4 has a process to
actively map between UIDs / GIDs where as v3/v2/v1 had to have
consistent UIDs / GIDs across the participating network.

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 11/18/20 6:57 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:

> NFSv4 is vastly different than NFSv3/2/1 in that v4 has a process to
> actively map between UIDs / GIDs where as v3/v2/v1 had to have
> consistent UIDs / GIDs across the participating network.

V4 is also stateful (implementing locking) from up the ground, where v3
was basically stateless and required sideband deamons for locking.