Just lost ALL browsing data. Everything.
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Yeah, always do backups, etc etc. I know. Long despaired post ahead.
Short story: yesterday I was doing a backup of an 8 gigs Sd card on Xubuntu, and I was short of storage, so I deleted something and it finished well. After that I updated my system as software updater just popped up. That also went fine.
Things started to get bad when I closed Vivaldi (usually browser is something that starts first and gets closed last) and wanted to reopen it. I clicked on the launcher and nothing happened, it just appeared f as a process and immediately disappeared. Time was late so I just went to bed. Early morning I saw my Xubuntu in login screen loop. Shortly after I realized that I have no space left on its disk. So I deleted a few hundreds of MBs. That strangely didn't help so I deleted a couple of gigs and then I could do a mkdir, so I rebooted and logged in as usually.
First thing I've tried to open a browser and saw a clean start page... (usually I have ~200 tabs, tab management is the main one (and sadly probably the last one) reason why I'm using Vivaldi at all)
Damn, I thought - probably it'd crashed and I lost my tabs again. It's good that I have sync and history.
Yeah. Tell me about it. When I opened history window, it was also completely fresh and empty. Months and years of work. But when it started to feel real bad - it's when I realized that ALL sync was completely empty too. No my tabs, no tabs from OTHER DEVICES - just nothing! The cloud icon wasn't even clickable!The only thing that survived was bookmarks. Probably because I haven't changed them during last session and they didn't got overwritten. P.S. Wow, what I typed in the address box is intact too, SIC!
Yeah, you can tell me that was my fault to rely on tabs. I'm in despair and I don't care, so don't waste your time. But what about history? what about tabs from other devices? I can handle that ubuntu gone crazy because it had no space left (and hell, it's 2020 and it didn't even notify me about it!)
But it's not about ubuntu's fault but Vivaldi's part in this spectacle.
I use vivaldi from version before 1.0 on linux and windows and I see major flaws in the browser itself, and this topic is not about what I have done wrong but what Vivaldi as a software could have done to improve user data safety and to prevent such disasters.
- Since I lost all tabs, it means that writing them to storage have failed. Question: WHY can't you ensure that all data has been stored, and only THEN close? And in case of failure, just tell the user - hey, I couldn't write this and this data - do something before I close and you lost it!
- Multiple windows. Vivaldi saves tabs only from LAST window closed. Someone suggested to use File -> Exit instead of close icon to save all windows. I haven't try that. Question: Is that so hard to detect own windows opened and prompt the user when they press X of what exactly they want to close? One window or all so some sh*tty accidental popup or private window doesn't screw every tab up? Yes, there is Reopen closed tabs but it sometimes works, sometimes don't.
- Sync. I thought this feature was to improve storing and moving of data, not storing of data loss. Are there any sync snapshots that can be reverted to in case of last sync was a failure? You will be my savior if you tell me about it, because I didn't find anything like it.
Question: If you see user have synced 1,2,5,100,200 tabs last time (and probably several times before), and now they want to sync zero. Shouldn't it look suspicious enough to ask a user before doing that blindly and silently? Or just don't sync if there is no possibility to ask? Or at least analyse tabs and sync only added without touching deleted tabs??? Yeah delete something twice will probably annoy user too but it is not even comparable to losing all your f****** tabs at once due to chain of failures!!!
Vivaldi as a mature browser should put user data security first, protecting users from human and environment factors too. I can withstand stupid scroll issues, or interface freezes, slow (but constant) raise of small annoying bugs as it gets bigger, but if it ever allow me to lose my data again so easily - I'm done with this. I'm a software developer myself with nearly 10 years of experience and previously (and now simultaneously) an engineer for more than 25 years, and I cannot understand when a software that people suppose to almost "live" in, tells about the clock in changelogs (really, what? No system nowadays had that ever) in the mean time not giving a damn about the fact that user can lost data so easily.
Yeah, I now will definitely look for ways to backup my tabs and data using other techniques. No more of that stupid mistakes anymore. And I don't believe in Vivaldi as a reliable tool anymore. What I just wrote was a despaired proposal of what Vivaldi should consider, written by [not anymore] loyal user since long before 1.0.
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@am4n0w4r Sorry to hear of your trouble. I shan't offer any gratuitous editorial judgement nor commentary. All i'll do is offer this...
I've used V since TP1 in Feb 2015, & have had my share of occasional wobbles with it, A few years ago i instituted external "protection", even though V for me fortunately has been very reliable for some years... but i wanted to be sure. So i have a permanent backup job running in the background, for both of my Nix boots, running each 5' & overwriting on FIFO each 24 hrs. Here's an extract from its config file, fyi:
profile5.snapshots.include.1.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi-snapshot/Default/Current Session profile5.snapshots.include.2.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.2.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi-snapshot/Default/Current Tabs profile5.snapshots.include.3.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.3.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi-snapshot/Default/Bookmarks profile5.snapshots.include.4.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.4.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi-snapshot/Default/Notes profile5.snapshots.include.5.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.5.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi/Default/Current Session profile5.snapshots.include.6.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.6.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi/Default/Current Tabs profile5.snapshots.include.7.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.7.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi/Default/Bookmarks profile5.snapshots.include.8.type=1 profile5.snapshots.include.8.value=/home/steffie/.config/vivaldi/Default/Notes
Best wishes.
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@Steffie thank you for that. I'm setting up a backup RAID, and frankly, I know about that files but yeah, having them described in one place and from other person is assuring that I'm in the right direction. I probably should have done that long before this happened, but it is as it is so I'll set up the backup now.
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