Todd's dashboard

Todd replied on December 09, 2009 23:45 to the question "why is my bookmark file corrupted." in Xmarks:

That's strange! Can you please email us your log file? (In Firefox, Tools → Xmarks → Xmarks Settings → Advanced → Show Log File) to support@xmarks.com. Be sure to put in a link to this Get Sat topic so that the recipient of that email will have some context.

Todd replied on December 06, 2009 17:51 to the problem "Firefox 3.5.5 internal Bookmarks fail after latest Xmarks installation" in Xmarks:

We've heard of one of other case that sounds vaguely similar to what you describe, but we haven't seen this problem ourselves, and it's obviously not very widespread.

So, some questions:

1. What other add-ons do you have installed?
2. If you look in the Firefox Error Console (Tools -> Error Console) and select "Errors" in the top panel, what do you see? (Warnings are not interesting, but errors might be.)
3. Does the problem behavior change any if you disable Xmarks Site Tags and Ratings? (Tools -> Xmarks -> Settings -> Discovery)
4. What OS are you using?

Todd replied on December 06, 2009 17:39 to the problem "Installation problem with Xmarks 3.4.3 on FF 3.5.6 (Windows 7)" in Xmarks:

@mszpirt, @emilharder:

If you're still having trouble, can you please confirm which version of Xmarks you have installed (as reported by Firefox in the Tools -> Addons menu) and tell us the exact text of the error message you're seeing?

We're pretty sure that we fixed the problem that was originally reported, but it's always possible that there's another one that we missed.

Todd replied on December 04, 2009 15:54 to the problem "Xmarks 3.4.3 breaks core Firefox functions (FF 3.5.5)!" in Xmarks:

@Will:

We haven't seen the problem you describe in our testing; if we had, we obviously wouldn't have released it.

It would help us greatly if you would do two things:

1) If you're able, downgrade to the previous version of Xmarks (it's still available as I write this on the Mozilla Add-ons Site) and tell us if it makes any difference.

2) Create a fresh Firefox profile and install just Xmarks in it and tell us whether the problem is reproducible for you that way.

Either way, the fact that you're apparently experiencing this on at least two computers suggests that this should be pretty easy to track down.

@oleg.sot:

What you describe sounds unrelated to the original post. Please send us the url's for crash reports, which you can find by typing about:crashes into your Firefox address bar.

Todd replied on October 06, 2009 01:03 to the question "Syncing gets stuck" in Xmarks:

Hi,

We use the Firefox's built-in networking, which typically has a (30 second?) timeout, so the behavior you're seeing is unusual. I also have a Mac, am running Firefox, and Xmarks recovers from sleep without difficulty.

So I would look at atypical things in your local network environment, e.g., on-box proxy, antivirus, firewall, etc.

Todd replied on September 25, 2009 01:37 to the problem "Xmarks keeps crashing Firefox!!" in Xmarks:

Try this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_h...

Todd replied on September 23, 2009 19:09 to the problem "Xmarks keeps crashing Firefox!!" in Xmarks:

Robert,

I wasn't aware that anyone thought that continuing to run SP2 was a good idea. That's certainly not Microsoft's position on the matter, but what do they know, right?

The logs that you submitted earlier all show Xmarks apparently losing consciousness as it's trying to create bookmarks locally that you created earlier on other computers. Xmarks relies on Firefox to perform this task, which in turns relies on sqlite. So the behavior you're seeing suggests that something has gone wrong with your sqlite file. Have you tried creating a new places.sqlite file?

Todd replied on September 23, 2009 01:27 to the problem "Xmarks keeps crashing Firefox!!" in Xmarks:

Robert,

Is there a reason you haven't upgraded to WinXP SP3?

Todd replied on September 22, 2009 17:40 to the problem "Unhandled Exception Error in XMarks" in Xmarks:

For those of you experiencing this problem on Firefox shutdown, what settings do you have for:

* Sync on Shutdown
* Ask First

(These settings are visible via Firefox Tools Menu -> Xmarks -> Settings -> Sync.)

Also:

* What other extensions do you have installed?

It appears that something has recently changed in the way that Firefox manages the application shutdown process; we're still trying to identify the source of the problem.

Todd replied on September 19, 2009 00:16 to the question "chaos in my bookmarks" in Xmarks:

I suspect that the problem you're seeing is due to a corruption in the bookmarks database on one of your computers. We have seen the symptom that you describe, in particular, Firefox starts associating the different urls with your bookmarks. Sometimes those urls are from other bookmarks; other times they are urls from some other site you've visited that's in your history.

You might want to try the solution recommended by Mozilla here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_h...

Todd replied on September 19, 2009 00:07 to the problem "Unhandled Exception Error in XMarks" in Xmarks:

Thanks for the report. We've heard of the same problem from a few other people, but only on browser startup. Are you sure that this happened on shutdown?

Todd replied on September 19, 2009 00:02 to the question "firefox 3.5.2 / 3.5.3 https problem" in Xmarks:

We haven't seen this problem here, so I suspect it's something specific to your configuration.

Can you provide any more information? What kind of error messages are you seeing? If Xmarks can't sync, what do you see in the Xmarks logs?

Todd replied on September 18, 2009 23:57 to the problem "Shrinking Display Width" in Xmarks:

It's not obvious that Xmarks was involved in this, but regardless, it appears that you've found a solution to the problem.

Todd replied on September 18, 2009 23:43 to the problem "Web Discovery options too CPU intensive" in Xmarks:

No one seems to have mentioned it in this thread, so...

There was a bug in Firefox 3.0.x that caused access to tags perform extremely slowly -- this could cause noticeable delays in both sync and when opening the bookmark add/edit dialog.

The bug has been fixed in Firefox 3.5, so if you're seeing this problem with versions of Firefox prior to 3.5, please upgrade.

Todd replied on September 18, 2009 23:37 to the problem "Xmarks keeps crashing Firefox!!" in Xmarks:

If you're seeing the browser crash, please send us the url's of Firefox crash reports, as described at the top of this thread.

If you're seeing the browser hang (i.e., become unresponsive), please ensure that you are running the latest versions of both Xmarks and the browser. If you're still having problems, please write us again with specific version and platform information for both Xmarks and your browser.

Todd replied on September 02, 2009 22:02 to the question "Any pitfalls running Xmarks on synced computers with different Firefox versions?" in Xmarks:

No, there shouldn't be any issues syncing between 3.5 and older versions of Firefox. The only thing you might notice is Mozilla fixed quite a few bugs in the 3.5 release, some of which improve performance substantially, especially if you use tags. But functionally, everything should be cool.

Todd replied on September 02, 2009 21:59 to the idea "Email links to myself at xmarks.com from my iPhone" in Xmarks:

As a recent iPhone convert myself, I think it's a great idea. You'd need, of course, to provide some kind of password to prevent random people from sending spam (that would in turn become bookmarks in your bookmark set). Or maybe restrict the email to a limited set of "From" addresses...

Either way, pretty cool and definitely useful. Thanks!

Todd replied on April 15, 2009 01:11 to the problem "Xmarks keeps crashing Firefox!!" in Xmarks:

Please post the urls for crash reports so we can see what you're seeing. As I suggested above, you can find these urls by going to about:crashes in Firefox 3.

Todd replied on April 13, 2009 00:15 to the problem "Why have you violated my trust?" in Xmarks:

Bill, your read of the code is correct -- Xmarks sends only diffs to our servers, which yields large network bandwidth efficiencies. We obviously can't do that with a simple DAV or FTP server, so if you're using your own server, Xmarks sends a file representation of your entire bookmark set over the wire each time. That's fine for you if you use your own server, but not so great for us with millions of users.

In addition to participating in the "diff" protocol, our servers also support two lesser-used but handy features: they let you restore to an arbitrary previous version so you can recover from a meltdown, and they support sync profiles, which let you exclude your personal stuff from work and vice versa. These features are also not supported by simple DAV or FTP.

P.S. Martin, we emailed everyone for whom we had an email address to announce the changes we were making. If you were using your own server and never had an account with us, we would have missed you. But I'm not sure what else we could do -- if we don't have your email address, there's no way for us to communicate with you other than making a software upgrade available to you and have the software itself communicate those changes (which is what we did).

Todd replied on April 12, 2009 23:45 to the problem "Xmarks installation will not complete." in Xmarks:

This is a symptom of a somewhat common Firefox profile corruption, and FreddyP was on the right track. Try this (slightly different) procedure:

1. Exit Firefox.
2. Go to the Firefox profile folder.
3. Delete the following files: extensions.rdf, extensions.cache, extensions.ini.
4. Reopen Firefox. If Xmarks isn't already installed, try installing it again.

Note that this process will have the side-effect of enabling all extensions that you have installed, so you'll have to disable again any extensions that you might have disabled previously.