How do I tell Firefox Sync to: Use *this* as my master copy - and propagate it to all my Windows desktop machines?
HI. I understand how difficult Sync is and have read the deep dive article on how it is being (or has been) rebuilt to work "properly". I have just one question - but here's why: Sync still has the ability to mess up bookmarks between my 5 Windows machines. So all I want is a clear way to do this: I'd like to fix up all my bookmarks on one machine : let's call it "A" - and then propagate that to all the others. I tried doing this by A. Stopping sync on all, B. Fixing up the duplicates, empty folders and other messed up things in bookmarks on A manually C. Starting Sync again. And within a day my 5 hour marathon had been completely wasted as they were in a heck of a mess again. Could someone please try and include "A straightforward way to reset and rebuild your bookmarks- AND SYNC THEM!" in the design doc? And put that a set of clear instructions somewhere? But in the meantime - please let me know how I do this. Surely "reset and rebuild from here" is an obvious requirement? Thanks guys - this hurts because I'm completely in love with the "new" Firefox and how safe I feel with it. So help me here!
Chosen solution
There is no "master" with Sync. With laptop / desktop devices all are equal and all the devices merge their data as they get connected to Sync. And when you're trying to "fix" messed up bookmarks you need to be patient as each one is connected back to the Sync server as it may take a few days for everything to become stable, unless you clean one device and then clear your bookmarks from the other 4 devices.
1. As far as fixing your bookmarks on device "A" goes, make sure you Disconnect from the Sync server while you are organizing bookmarks. And when you're done go into Help > Troubleshooting Information and scroll down to Places Database and use the Verify Integrity button and wait for the results of the process. Make sure it is "sane" and "coherent".
IMO, the start and stop as you ponder how to rearrange bookmarks when Connected to Sync is where most users go wrong. Communication with the Sync server seems to stop after a few changes are made and when those actions stop the local device will start sending data to the Sync server again only to stop once more when the 'batch' threshold is reached again.
Strictly my observations a few years ago when I was trying to duplicate user complaints and failures. I observed those "stops" when running Sync with two different Profiles with the different / separate windows tiled on the screen side-by-side; I could add or move a bookmark in one Profile and before I could even shift my eyes to the other tiled 1/2 window it would add the new bookmark or show the moved bookmark. That is until I moved a few more bookmarks quickly and the the "moves" wouldn't appear for a few minutes. And when I would do a massive rearrangement of bookmarks, sometimes the Sync server would fix things all by itself in that sitting but at other times it did take a few days depending upon the amount of changes made, how many bookmarks were involved (total saved and how many rearranged), and especially how often I would sit and figure out what else belong in a different location between batches of moves.
And do that Disconnect whenever you feel the need to move more than a few bookmarks at the same time, once you have fixed what's wrong now.
2. Before Reconnecting device "A" to the Sync server change the Password for the Firefox Account, which will clear all the Firefox data from the server to give you a fresh start with a clean load from device "A". Depending upon how much data is synchronized let the initial connection run for quite awhile, like maybe an hour is what I have done. Then close Firefox and restart to get a "launch connection" with the Sync server, and maybe do that a few times.
3. Then with the other 4 devices it is probably best to just get rid of all the bookmarks on each of those devices so that the Sync server doesn't have to deal with trying to merge any bookmarks data to the server from each of those devices. That way all Sync has to deal with is the few default bookmarks that come with Firefox, like under 10 bookmarks. >> With Firefox closed: A. In the Profile folder get rid of the places.sqlite file which contains bookmarks, browsing history, and downloads history. B. Also in the Profile folder open the /bookmarkbackups/ folder clear all the backup JSON / JSONLZ4 files there (15 is the default number of backups saved). Save them in a different folder on that device if you wish, but get them out so that Firefox doesn't restore a backup when Firefox is launched with the places.sqlite file removed.
4. As you Connect each of the other 4 devices back to Sync, you will need to use the new Password. Don't rush the process of the initial Sync and don't start rearranging bookmarks until all 5 devices are up and running with Sync again. Most common change may be wanting different bookmarks on the Bookmarks Toolbar on each of the devices, so postpone making the changes until you're done connecting all the devices.
I have walked a good number of users thru this process of fixing discombobulated / corrupt bookmarks and many users have cut the process short, thus wasting their time needing to re-do the process completely.
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (2)
Chosen Solution
There is no "master" with Sync. With laptop / desktop devices all are equal and all the devices merge their data as they get connected to Sync. And when you're trying to "fix" messed up bookmarks you need to be patient as each one is connected back to the Sync server as it may take a few days for everything to become stable, unless you clean one device and then clear your bookmarks from the other 4 devices.
1. As far as fixing your bookmarks on device "A" goes, make sure you Disconnect from the Sync server while you are organizing bookmarks. And when you're done go into Help > Troubleshooting Information and scroll down to Places Database and use the Verify Integrity button and wait for the results of the process. Make sure it is "sane" and "coherent".
IMO, the start and stop as you ponder how to rearrange bookmarks when Connected to Sync is where most users go wrong. Communication with the Sync server seems to stop after a few changes are made and when those actions stop the local device will start sending data to the Sync server again only to stop once more when the 'batch' threshold is reached again.
Strictly my observations a few years ago when I was trying to duplicate user complaints and failures. I observed those "stops" when running Sync with two different Profiles with the different / separate windows tiled on the screen side-by-side; I could add or move a bookmark in one Profile and before I could even shift my eyes to the other tiled 1/2 window it would add the new bookmark or show the moved bookmark. That is until I moved a few more bookmarks quickly and the the "moves" wouldn't appear for a few minutes. And when I would do a massive rearrangement of bookmarks, sometimes the Sync server would fix things all by itself in that sitting but at other times it did take a few days depending upon the amount of changes made, how many bookmarks were involved (total saved and how many rearranged), and especially how often I would sit and figure out what else belong in a different location between batches of moves.
And do that Disconnect whenever you feel the need to move more than a few bookmarks at the same time, once you have fixed what's wrong now.
2. Before Reconnecting device "A" to the Sync server change the Password for the Firefox Account, which will clear all the Firefox data from the server to give you a fresh start with a clean load from device "A". Depending upon how much data is synchronized let the initial connection run for quite awhile, like maybe an hour is what I have done. Then close Firefox and restart to get a "launch connection" with the Sync server, and maybe do that a few times.
3. Then with the other 4 devices it is probably best to just get rid of all the bookmarks on each of those devices so that the Sync server doesn't have to deal with trying to merge any bookmarks data to the server from each of those devices. That way all Sync has to deal with is the few default bookmarks that come with Firefox, like under 10 bookmarks. >> With Firefox closed: A. In the Profile folder get rid of the places.sqlite file which contains bookmarks, browsing history, and downloads history. B. Also in the Profile folder open the /bookmarkbackups/ folder clear all the backup JSON / JSONLZ4 files there (15 is the default number of backups saved). Save them in a different folder on that device if you wish, but get them out so that Firefox doesn't restore a backup when Firefox is launched with the places.sqlite file removed.
4. As you Connect each of the other 4 devices back to Sync, you will need to use the new Password. Don't rush the process of the initial Sync and don't start rearranging bookmarks until all 5 devices are up and running with Sync again. Most common change may be wanting different bookmarks on the Bookmarks Toolbar on each of the devices, so postpone making the changes until you're done connecting all the devices.
I have walked a good number of users thru this process of fixing discombobulated / corrupt bookmarks and many users have cut the process short, thus wasting their time needing to re-do the process completely.
If you would want Sync to go in one direction then you first need to clear the data on the Sync server and then only connect the one device that is intended to be the master. Once the initial Sync has finished disconnect this device and then connect other devices to get these bookmarks. If these other devices already have bookmarks then these will be uploaded to the server and merged to other devices, so to prevent that you would have to remove the bookmarks from all devices (create an HTML backup, so you can reload (import them at a later time).