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bookmark sharing problems

  • 6 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by user700204

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FF 61.0.2 iMac 10.11.6

My Firefox sync doesn't work. I have an account, and can sign in successfully. I hit the twirling arrow icon to start syncing, and it twirls, and twirls, and twirls ... It never gets done. As far as I can tell, looking at my other machine, nothing ever syncs. Looking at my Restore files, my bookmark file looks to be 230K. So it isn't as though I have a zillion bookmarks.

Now, another oddity is that when I command to "Export Bookmarks to HTML", no file is ever created that I can find. An html file called "bookmarks" is supposed to be deposited on my Desktop, but never is.

Total weirdness. Help!

FF 61.0.2 iMac 10.11.6 My Firefox sync doesn't work. I have an account, and can sign in successfully. I hit the twirling arrow icon to start syncing, and it twirls, and twirls, and twirls ... It never gets done. As far as I can tell, looking at my other machine, nothing ever syncs. Looking at my Restore files, my bookmark file looks to be 230K. So it isn't as though I have a zillion bookmarks. Now, another oddity is that when I command to "Export Bookmarks to HTML", no file is ever created that I can find. An html file called "bookmarks" is supposed to be deposited on my Desktop, but never is. Total weirdness. Help!

All Replies (6)

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You can open about:sync-log via the location bar to see if there are recent error logs available. You can upload a recent log if the log is too big to put in a reply.


If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database (bookmarks and history) in the Firefox profile folder.

  • use "Verify Integrity" on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page
    in case errors are reported close and restart Firefox and retry

See also:

If "Verify Integrity" on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page cannot repair places.sqlite then remove all places.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder. Firefox will rebuild places.sqlite and restore the bookmarks from a recent JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

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Thank you. Somewhat strangely, it started working, but I'm going to keep your writeup in case the problems return. I've seen this happen before, and it's not really clear how I manage to make it go away.

I should say, that when I go to about:sync-log, I get a long string of text files (presumably written each time I try to sync), with a "error-sync" prefixed filename. No matter whether it was a failed sync (mostly yesterday) or a successful one (today). Are these text files supposed to mean that errors were encountered, or are they just sync logs where errors might be reported if there are any?

Modified by user700204

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They are errors if it says errors. Upload to https://pastebin.mozilla.org/ post URL

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OK, I just did a sync on my desktop, the arrow spun for a few seconds and then it was done. Looked like a normal sync. I synced on another machine with the same account, and my bookmarks were all properly transferred. So it appears.

But in my about:sync-log on my desktop, I see

"File:error-sync-1535229162279.txt 12 KB 	8/25/18 	3:32:42 PM CDT"

and this text file can be found in

https://pastebin.mozilla.org/9092114

What's going on? Is there really an error? Was the sync really successful?

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Not sure what is going on here. This is under investigation in the bug report.

  • bug 1416255 - "Server has been flushed" error when syncing extension-storage
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cor-el said

Not sure what is going on here. This is under investigation in the bug report.
  • bug 1416255 - "Server has been flushed" error when syncing extension-storage

So that bug report has been out for six months. Is it clear what makes this happen, or what fixes it? That is, I can endure a bug if there are clear ways to get around it.