Firefox 32 and 34 not syncing even in a clean install
I have been using Firefox Sync since it was an extension called Weave and it has worked perfectly until now.
I was using Firefox Aurora on Ubuntu 14.04 but I had to uninstall Ubuntu completely from my computer and install Windows 7. The point is that on Windows I tried with Firefox Aurora (34) and Release (32) to recover my bookmarks and none of them is syncing. Everything looks to work fine, even I can see a message saying "Firefox will begin syncing momentarily" after logging in with my account but that never happens. It says it's correctly synced but I never get the bookmarks/history from my old Ubuntu.
I have more devices connected to my account but only can access one them right now, it is my Android phone where I have Firefox Beta (33). There everything works fine, I have my bookmarks as they were in my Ubuntu.
Any idea what's going on? Let me know if you need any other information.
Gekose oplossing
The at sync logs looks mostly successful. It ends part-way through syncing history, is that the whole file or are there additional lines after that?
I do still see errors while syncing bookmarks, e.g. "Could not move item _QPSFiHp2U_X", which suggests some sort of corruption in the bookmarks data. I wonder if this is the same error your android device is hitting, which makes it appear not to sync.
I suggest starting from scratch as much as possible, with the following set of steps:
1) Disconnect all your devices from sync 2) Go to https://accounts.firefox.com/ and delete your account 3) Go to https://accounts.firefox.com/ and re-create your account 4) Set up sync afresh on the android device; hopefully this will allow it to sync successfully 5) On your other devices, start from a new firefox profile and connect them to sync one at a time
If this still does not work, it may mean that one of the bookmarks on your android device is "unsyncable" in some may, and we may have to try to track it down and delete it by hand.
Lees dié antwoord in konteks 👍 3All Replies (13)
Please copy and paste the latest sync log from your Windows 7 computer by typing about:sync-log in your url bar and pressing enter. Then copy the entire contents of the latest log and post it here.
Hey Noah, thank you for your fast reply.
When I enter to about:sync-log I can only see an empty table as shown in the image. Any idea? In the image you can also see that Sync seems to be properly connected.
You're welcome. Maybe there is no errors to report. Are you only trying to sync bookmarks and history? Are those the only 2 items you have selected in the sync options?
By default, sync-log will only show errors. If a Sync is successful, it will not log. However, you can modify this behavior by changing services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnSuccess from false to true.
Copy and paste this into your url bar and press enter: about:config?filter=services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnSuccess
You might see a warning page. Click the "I'll be careful..." button.
Double-click the services.sync.log.appender.file.logOnSuccess setting to change it to true. Now exit Firefox and restart it. Login to Sync again. Then visit about:sync-log in your url bar, open the error-*numbers*.txt file and copy and paste the contents of it here.
If the forum will not let you post it here because it is too long, go to http://pastebin.mozilla.org/ and post the log there and post the link to see it here. You'll have to copy it from the url bar after you hit submit. Looks like this: http://pastebin.mozilla.org/666667
Thanks Noah for all your help. I did what you said. You can see the result here: http://pastebin.mozilla.org/6736014
I see in some places there is the word "error" but I still don't understand where the problem is.
Gewysig op
The Sync developers were wondering how many bookmarks you were expecting to be copied over. The log says it tries to get 13 of them then fails. They suspect you have a much higher amount of bookmarks you are trying to sync.
They think doing a Firefox Reset on the Windows 7 computer will help. It'll create a new firefox profile for you and get rid of any corrupted files, if there are any. Then try to login into Sync again in this new profile.
A backup of the old firefox profile folder will be saved on the desktop as "Old Firefox data" in case you need it.
To do a Firefox Reset, read: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-preferences-fix-problems#w_solution-1-reset-firefox-to-its-default-state
Also you forgot to answer my question from earlier: Are you only trying to sync bookmarks and history? Are those the only 2 items you have selected in the sync options?
Gewysig op
Hey Noah, I already did a Firefox reset. I'm not at home right now, so I will do it again later and I will copy again the result from about:sync-log so you can check what is wrong. But if it didn't work the first time, I'm afraid it will not work now.
I tried connecting to my Sync account from my work computer and I think the result is the same than from my personal computer: http://pastebin.mozilla.org/6740589
Regarding to your questions: - I would like to sync everything: bookmarks, addons, history, passwords... (I have all checkboxes selected) - I had more than 13 bookmarks. Not sure how many, but more than a hundred for sure.
Thank you again for your patience.
Oh wait. Just found that now in my work PC I have the bookmarks and history from my home PC with Windows 7. So it looks like what I had in Ubuntu has dissapeared and now Firefox Sync is working fine between my personal Windows 7 and my work PC?
Any way to recover my old bookmarks/history? How could I have removed them from the server?
Very strange. I was actually afraid of that happening. It sounds like the Ubuntu device that was stored in the Sync records expired. And when a device expires off Sync, I think it removes the data associated with it. It takes about 3 weeks for a device to expire if you don't login with it during that time.
How long ago did you uninstall Ubuntu? The bad part is if the only place you had your bookmarks backed up was on Ubuntu, then you've lost them for good. Because once data is deleted from Sync, it's not recoverable.
Unfortunately people see Sync as a backup service but it's more of a sharing tool. Just because it lives in the cloud that doesn't make it a reliable backup. :/
If you had the larger store of bookmarks on any of your other Windows 7 computers (home or work), we could use the "Previous versions" feature to try to recover specific files in your firefox profile to get your bookmarks and history back. But it sounds like they were all located on the Ubuntu install. :(
Well, fortunately I still have a "Desktop bookmarks" folder in my Firefox Android with all my old bookmarks. Because (I checked it now) I have an error in Sync so it hadn't been syncing the last weeks. So, my question is: is there any way to export them from my Firefox for Android and import them to my Firefox for PC?
Btw, I also have some old computers that will still have my old bookmarks, but I cannot access them since I moved recently to another country. But in the worst case scenario, I will be able to recover them when I get back home. :)
Anyway, thank you for all your help. Do you think I should fill a bug for that?
Unfortunately there's not an easy way to export bookmarks from an android device - we have an open bug about it at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=775104
The simplest thing may be to try to get the android device syncing correctly again. What was the error you're getting on the android device?
Hey rfkelly, thank you for your reply. I could solve the Android issue, the problem was that I had "Auto-sync data" deactivated in the Android Data usage preferences.
After that, Android looked to work fine, but I didn't get the bookmarks (and other data) from my computer. In order to solve that, I removed my Firefox account from my Android preferences and added it back. Before, it said the last sync had been the 20th of September, but now it doesn't say any date: it looks like it's syncing forever.
And the problems don't finish here, I was not getting the mobile bookmarks in my laptop either, so I disconnected my Sync account and made another Firefox reset. After that, when I tried to set up my account again, it looked to work fine but it was not syncing anything, so I check about:sync-log and I got this error: http://pastebin.mozilla.org/6780260
Maybe it would just be easier to set up a new account?
Gekose oplossing
The at sync logs looks mostly successful. It ends part-way through syncing history, is that the whole file or are there additional lines after that?
I do still see errors while syncing bookmarks, e.g. "Could not move item _QPSFiHp2U_X", which suggests some sort of corruption in the bookmarks data. I wonder if this is the same error your android device is hitting, which makes it appear not to sync.
I suggest starting from scratch as much as possible, with the following set of steps:
1) Disconnect all your devices from sync 2) Go to https://accounts.firefox.com/ and delete your account 3) Go to https://accounts.firefox.com/ and re-create your account 4) Set up sync afresh on the android device; hopefully this will allow it to sync successfully 5) On your other devices, start from a new firefox profile and connect them to sync one at a time
If this still does not work, it may mean that one of the bookmarks on your android device is "unsyncable" in some may, and we may have to try to track it down and delete it by hand.
I did what you said and now I have a Firefox Account working perfectly. :) By mistake I removed all my Android bookmarks/history/... but I hope to recover them when I get the opportunity to use one of my old computers.
Anyway, thank you very much for your help!