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Sync service become REAL slow

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  • Last reply by drahcirr

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The server my FireFox beta 32 uses is: sync-44-us-west-2.sync.services.mozilla.com:443 and for about 5 days now, it is really slow (like 5 minutes) sync'ing my Bookmarks, etc.

What's up ??

Previously, sync would take a maximum of about 5 seconds.... This is by pressing the Sync NOW button.

The server my FireFox beta 32 uses is: sync-44-us-west-2.sync.services.mozilla.com:443 and for about 5 days now, it is really slow (like 5 minutes) sync'ing my Bookmarks, etc. What's up ?? Previously, sync would take a maximum of about 5 seconds.... This is by pressing the Sync NOW button.

All Replies (11)

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Hi harrystarr,

I am sorry to hear that the service is not as fast as it was when it first started. What's wonderful about new services is that they work really fast when the server queue is low, but when more people sign up and use the service, the queue schedules tasks. If you are interested you can check out on the sync logs, or that about:config entry sync.scheduler is what I think it is called there is a default number of seconds that it waits to schedule the next attempted sync. (36000 seconds)

If there are messages like network backoff, it means the server is syncing the profile in parts because the server is busy. The progress will continue until all the elements that changed are updated.

In the meantime, I get some coffee and check to make sure there are not errors when it is slow. If you would like to investigate further, happy to help.

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Hi guigs2,

I did look in the various weave logs, and was getting back-offs, but more worrying, service errors and, after looking in my Squid proxy logs, 501 errors from the sync service. Response times (or I should say connection times) to the sync service were in the order of 800+seconds. Not much data was being transferred over that period though. (<40k)

The kicker was when one of the machines started doubling up on the sync items; and a whole bunch of (very) old bookmarks re-appeared.

So I took the cannon to the problem; unsubscribed both machines; cleaned-up one machines bookmarks; exported them to json; then deleted all bookmarks from BOTH machines.

I added back the bookmarks to my (master) machine, re-subscribed to Sync, and waited for the sync to complete (less than a minute).

Then I re-subscribed the 2nd machine (empty of bookmarks) and let it sync (less than 1 minute) and it had the same bookmarks as the 1st. As a side note, I noticed that NONE of the site icons were on the 2nd machine, bu they do re-appear after visiting a site. Also, cookies weren't working on the 2nd machine (and yes, they are set to sync)

For the moment, sync appears to be working. A manual sync (after changes) takes less than 10 secs (4,000+ bookmarks).

I have noticed that the current BETA is not so aggressive with updates. Changes do not immediately sync like they used to in previous versions; but seem to batch up for 90+ seconds. Manual sync still works.

I'll keep an eye on it for a while, as it has shaken my faith in the Sync system -- it used to "just work!" but is now on my suspect list.

Would be nice if the "web" service allowed Export of its content....

Thanks for replying to my original problem...

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harrystar, Not a problem, thank you for the details. It does sound like there were old network issues two weeks ago, but have since resolved. I wonder if there was an old token. If it does happen again go ahead and grab pastebin.mozilla.org and we can get the #sync irc channel to take a look.

Thank you!

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Not getting any errors at the moment, but sync times have pushed out past 3 mins. Not much data is moving in that 3 minutes...

Here is the last sync line from Squid: 1408786151.664 302520 203.17.152.5 TCP_MISS/200 187758 CONNECT sync-44-us-west-2.sync.services.mozilla.com:443 - DIRECT/54.187.102.9 0 - Notice (Field 2) response time of 302+ secs with traffic (field 5) of 187k

Is there anyway to get weave logs in non-error situations ?

Thanks for helping

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hello, in order to create logs when sync isn't failingtry this: enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnSuccess. double-click it and change its value to true.

https://quality.mozilla.org/helpful-tips-for-qa-of-sync/

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Thanks Philipp,

Will enable the logs, and might even do a 'trace' of bookmarks.

Is it normal for Sync to keep long-open connections to the sync servers?

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Here is one of the 'long' running sync -- sync logs. There are failures. http://pastebin.mozilla.org/6133994

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There is a partial sync failure in tabs after it reconciles some bookmarks that dis not sync in the previous segment of bookmarks.

Then addons fail as well. If you temporarily disable tabs and addons, does sync complete? If you then readd the two preferences on the next sync, does this make a difference?

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I have been reading some of the 'slow' sync logs after turning on success logging.

I had a huge (65K+) number of history entries. This seemed to be bogging down the sync. I tried selectively deleting (in bookmark manager [Ctrl+Shift+B]) some of the history (like greater than 6 months), but all that did was bog down the syncer in reconciliation items; which made the syncer service continually send me 'backoffs' with 10 hour times!!

So I went all out and deleted all history via the 'Clear recent history' menu item. I had some 3 years of history entries. This Firefox has been updated since the days of FF 4.0!

Now, it seems, sync is OK. Takes about 6 seconds for my 4500 bookmarks and no history. If I add bookmarks (which I do a lot), it doesn't seem to affect the sync times. For the moment, I am keeping the history trimmed to nothing (clearing it after each session) and Manually syncing just before I close FF. I have to do the manual sync because FF does not seem to do a sync before shutdown any more.

BTW, my places.sqlite was over 100MB; so I used sqlite3.exe to VACUUM the database, and it is now 3MB. My netpredictions.sqlite is 89MB and I am still investigating how I can minimize this...

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That last file is a connections cache that was added in version 29. To disable it in about:config you can set network.seer.enabled to false.

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I appreciate all the input for the problem of sync is running slow, however it does not seems to address the situatio0n and use habits I have.

There are the occasions that I need to re-file and organize the bookmarks and folders. While the sync service is logged into the response time can be slow, and while the sync process is occurring further organization and movement of the bookmarks and folders are suspended. and I can accept that if it was one or two changes I was making. but making a large number of changes is time consuming.

In attempts to solve this I have logged off the sync service, made my changes and the logged back into sync. The results were that the changes that I made were negated and all was returned (restored) to the filing that existed prior to logging off sync.

Can I reorganize my bookmarks not logged into sync and have them uploaded after I made the changes without sync negating all my efforts? Thanks in advance. Richard