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Computers won't sync

  • 7 replies
  • 10 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by rfkelly

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I have a Mac and PC. Both have up-to-date Firefox; however, my I am unable to sync my information from my Mac to my PC. I have read the how-to posts, so please don't just respond with them linked.

When I sign in with my Firefox account on my PC, to start syncing, it says, "Sync enabled. Firefox will begin syncing shortly." However, it never ends up syncing.

I have a Mac and PC. Both have up-to-date Firefox; however, my I am unable to sync my information from my Mac to my PC. I have read the how-to posts, so please don't just respond with them linked. When I sign in with my Firefox account on my PC, to start syncing, it says, "Sync enabled. Firefox will begin syncing shortly." However, it never ends up syncing.

All Replies (7)

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Anyone, please help??

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I can't help you with the Firefox Sync since I don't use it myself, but if it is only a sync functionality you need then you can try out xmarks.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/

I have been using it for several years now, before Firefox Sync became availble, so I just stuck with it. It helps when I am using other peoples' computers as well since I can just sign in on their website and open any bookmarks that synced from my computer.

In the reviews people have been having issues with duplicate bookmarks, but I only had that issue when I tried to sync bookmarks across different browsers. My only warning with this add-on is that if you're going to use it with other browsers in addition to Firefox, you may experience some problems. I am using Firefox on Ubuntu and Windows, and syncing bookmarks between them using xmarks without any issues, so I would think that Firefox on Mac and Windows should be fine too (I won't provide a 100% guarentee on this though).

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Hi Sheepy, Thank you for your question, how big is the profile that you are syncing, it may take some time for the initial sync. However if there are no error messages, error logging may be helpful. But first, if you remove the account and re-add the account.

  • How do I turn on sync logs:
  1. Open about:config and turn on: services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnSuccess and services.sync.log.logger.engine.bookmarks
  2. Restart Firefox and look at: about:sync-log
  3. Logs and error messages will be located here
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Thank you CoryMH, I will keep that in mind.

guigs2, I'm not really sure how to determine what constitutes as large or medium or small, but I would say medium-ish. There are no error messages. It just tells me that Firefox will begin syncing and never does.

I did your error logging and this is what I got:

error-1408047084681.txt error-1408047084996.txt

Let me know if you want me to expand on them, since they're clickable, and what it says inside really means nothing to me.

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Forget the last part as I will post what they both say, since I realized the .txt probably aren't error numbers you can look up.

First one: 1408044137892 Sync.BrowserIDManager INFO currentAuthState returning error.login.reason.network due to previous failure 1408044137892 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.login: success.login => error.login.reason.network 1408044137892 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.service: success.status_ok => error.login.failed 1408044138683 Sync.Tracker.Clients DEBUG Saving changed IDs to clients 1408044138684 Sync.Tracker.Bookmarks DEBUG Saving changed IDs to bookmarks 1408044138687 Sync.Tracker.Forms DEBUG Saving changed IDs to forms 1408044138688 Sync.Tracker.History DEBUG Saving changed IDs to history 1408044138689 Sync.Tracker.Passwords DEBUG Saving changed IDs to passwords 1408044138887 Sync.Tracker.Addons DEBUG Saving changed IDs to addons 1408047084667 FirefoxAccounts DEBUG Notifying observers of fxaccounts:onlogout 1408047084668 Sync.BrowserIDManager DEBUG observed fxaccounts:onlogout 1408047084668 Sync.AddonsReconciler DEBUG Removing change listener. 1408047084668 Sync.AddonsReconciler DEBUG Stopping listening and removing AddonManager listeners. 1408047084670 Sync.Tracker.History INFO Removing Places observer. 1408047084671 Sync.Status INFO Resetting Status. 1408047084671 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.service: error.login.failed => success.status_ok 1408047084672 Sync.BrowserIDManager INFO Fetching assertion and token from: [removed link] 1408047084672 FirefoxAccounts DEBUG already verified 1408047084673 Sync.BrowserIDManager DEBUG Getting an assertion 1408047084673 FirefoxAccounts DEBUG enter getAssertion() 1408047084677 Sync.BrowserIDManager DEBUG Getting a token 1408047084678 Sync.BrowserIDManager ERROR Non-authentication error in _fetchTokenForUser: assertion argument is not valid. 1408047084678 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.login: success.login => error.login.reason.network 1408047084678 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.service: success.status_ok => error.login.failed 1408047084679 Sync.SyncScheduler DEBUG Clearing sync triggers and the global score. 1408047084681 Sync.SyncScheduler DEBUG Next sync in 3600000 ms.

Second one: 1408047084681 Sync.ErrorHandler DEBUG Flushing file log. 1408047084684 Sync.BrowserIDManager ERROR Failed to fetch a token for authentication: TokenServerClientError({"message":"assertion argument is not valid."}) 1408047084685 Sync.BrowserIDManager INFO currentAuthState returning error.login.reason.network due to previous failure 1408047084686 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.login: error.login.reason.network => error.login.reason.network 1408047084686 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.service: error.login.failed => error.login.failed 1408047084748 Sync.ErrorHandler DEBUG Log cleanup threshold time: 1407183084748 1408047084785 Sync.ErrorHandler DEBUG No logs to clean up. 1408047084987 Sync.Resource DEBUG mesg: DELETE fail 401 [link removed] 1408047084987 Sync.Resource DEBUG DELETE fail 401 [link removed] 1408047084988 Sync.BrowserIDManager INFO Fetching assertion and token from: [link removed] 1408047084988 FirefoxAccounts DEBUG already verified 1408047084989 Sync.BrowserIDManager DEBUG Getting an assertion 1408047084989 FirefoxAccounts DEBUG enter getAssertion() 1408047084992 Sync.BrowserIDManager DEBUG Getting a token 1408047084993 Sync.BrowserIDManager ERROR Non-authentication error in _fetchTokenForUser: assertion argument is not valid. 1408047084993 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.login: error.login.reason.network => error.login.reason.network 1408047084993 Sync.Status DEBUG Status.service: error.login.failed => error.login.failed 1408047084994 Sync.SyncScheduler DEBUG Clearing sync triggers and the global score. 1408047084995 Sync.SyncScheduler DEBUG Next sync in 3600000 ms.

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Ya looks like thereis a network error: 1408047084678 Sync.BrowserIDManager ERROR Non-authentication error in _fetchTokenForUser: assertion argument is not valid.

I would remove the account and add it one more time to the profile. Please make sure that you can connect to accounts.firefox.com.

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> assertion argument is not valid

I believe this is a bug in the firefox client code, I've seen it before but I couldn't find an official bug report.

If I recall correctly, the bug is triggered by an underlying server or network error. You may find it just goes away when whatever the underlying problem is gets resolved.

I will try to find a reference to the bug and see if there are further steps you can take.