Firefox Sync - Weave Logs Folder has many logs

[Big Al]

There are some 170 logs .txt files.
Spotty error logs in April and May, about 8, then the remainder in December. Starting 12/7/15

Is there some issue with the Sync/weave part of FF??
Should I even worry about these logs?

[VanguardLH]

I had some logs under the weave folder (also seen by entering
about:sync-log in the address bar):

Nov 28 & 29
Dec 8

Note that I didn't get Sync aka Weave to work at first or even after
trying to fix it for awhile using articles I found through online
searches. I eventually enabled the option to remember site passwords,
logged into Sync, and then disabled the option to remember site
passwords (I do not want them recorded in Firefox's password manager).
I also had to NOT clear passwords on exit from Firefox. That way, the
Sync password got recorded into Firefox's password manager but that was
the only one, and it would be there when Sync wanted to reconnect. So I
don't know if the November errors were due to me playing around with
Sync trying to get it to work or I already have Sync finally setup
correctly and these were actual connect errors (not login errors).

Three logs were on Nov 28 and bunched around the same time (8:02 PM to
8:05 PM). Two logs on Nov 29 were 12 hours apart so they are separate
error causes. Then there was 1 on Dec 8. My guess is their Sync server
gets too busy so further connects are rejected. Servers cannot handle
an infinite number of concurrently connections. They are limited on the
maximum number of concurrent sessions. Plus remember that you do not
have a direct connection to their server from your client host. You
have to hop through a route from you to them, and any host in that route
that is slow, unresponsive, or down means you can't even reach the
target server host. Routing is not dynamic: if a host in your router is
slow or dead, the route is slow or dead. You can report routing
problems (to your own ISP since you aren't a customer at the ISP for the
target host) but it takes time for someone to see the trouble ticket,
respond to it, update the routing tables, and have the routing propagate
to other servers (if the fix was on the other end instead of yours).

The weave logs are text files. When I looked at the few that I had, all
but one reported a login error. The one reported the sync completed
okay but then followed ith an error (with no specifics). The server
might've been too busy to accept more connections. The server might've
been down (if all Firefox users experience the same login error at the
same time). Maybe a host in your route to their server was dead (since,
after all, this is a client-side log) or too slow so the server timeout
waiting for the login credentials to arrive in an established
connection. Could be your security setup (anti-virus, firewall, etc) is
interferring with the Sync connection (can you go into Options -> Sync
and do a manual login?).

I don't know and haven't heard that Sync has a resume function. The
more data you sync then the more bandwidth required which also means the
longer the session. Anything flaky in the route between you and the
server can affect the sync session. I only sync on bookmarks,
passwords, [list of] add-ons, and preferences. Tabs and History are not
synchronized. Having lots of open tabs and a huge history list means
more to sync which means more bandwidth which means more time, and
probably without a recovery (resume) feature since Mozilla probably
figures, well, if this sync failed then a later sync will work and
you'll still likely be covered.

You said you had a 170 log files. Only 8 of them occurred back in April
and May, there was 6 month haitus, and then 172 showed up on Dec 7.
Sure looks like either something got changed in your software setup
(anti-virus install or AV program update, firewall install or update,
Firefox config change, Sync account credentials are wrong - check with a
manual sync, or the route between you and the Sync server is down).
What happens when you load the OS (never mentioned) in its safe mode or
whatever it is called in your unidentified OS to eliminate loading
anti-virus, firewall, and other startup programs, reboot, and then
retest sync in Firefox? I've only had 1 sync error log generated in Dec
(on the 8th) and I am synching. So I'd start looking at your end to see
what software change there was on Dec 7.

Can you ping the Sync server? Sorry, I'd have to monitor network
traffic to see to what server by URL or IP address that Firefox was
trying to connect when I start a manual sync in Firefox. You can do
that. Then check if the network monitor shows Firefox reaches the
target host or simply try to ping it (although many servers have IMCP
disabled to eliminate superfluous traffic). Could be about:config tells
the Sync server's URL under services.sync.clusterURL. I tried "ping
sync-270-us-west-2.sync.services.mozilla.com", the host specified in
that setting, but got no response. Could be that's the wrong server to
ping, it is dead or unreachable (but I'm not getting Sync error logs
today), or Mozilla simply did not enable IMCP on that server. For me,
the services.sync.lastSync settings shows there was a successful sync
event only 8 minutes ago. A traceroute on that sync host only got me so
far as Amazon's boundary host (54.239.48.195). They don't want me or
hackers mapping their internal network. The IP address for the sync
host (54.68.98.161) is in Amazon's pool, so Mozilla is using Amazon's
hosting services probably for worldwide load balancing and redundancy
(like how Microsoft uses Akamai's worldwide distributed data centers).

You aren't running your own Sync server, right?
(http://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html)

[Big Al]

I found that setting this setting in about:config to false stops logs.
services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnError

[VanguardLH]

Big Al wrote:

> I found that setting this setting in about:config to false stops logs.
> services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnError

But if the error logs were still getting generated then putting on
blinds doesn't solve the problem. Did you even check if Firefox is
logging into the Sync server? When you load Firefox, does it log into
the Sync server? If not, can you manually login?

I would leave error logging enabled; however, if you get lots of errors
and cannot or do not want to fix their cause then I would use a cleanup
tool to empty out the weave folder. CCleaner lets you include paths for
it to clean and can even specify how old are the files before they are
eligible to be deleted. So you could schedule CCleaner to run at
periodic intervals (use the /auto command-line switch to run without
user intervention) but leave files in folders that are less than 24
hours old, or however you want to retain them.