Firefox Sync not syncing with device
I recently noticed (approx last couple weeks maybe?) some inconsistencies with regard to bookmarks on my laptop. So, I did a side-by-side comparison with a couple other computers I sync up with and noticed they were syncing just fine, but my laptop which has never had a problem is now experiencing issues syncing. When I click Sync Now (under Tools on the Menu Bar), I immediately clicked the menu button and saw the blue-colored sync progress indicator arrows rotating. Thinking this would now sync up my laptop with the other computers and vice versa, I noticed an error message at the bottom of the page that read: Sync encountered an error while syncing: Failed to connect to the server. Sync will automatically retry this action. The 'Preferences...' button appeared to the right of the message so, naturally, I clicked it and it opened up the Options window for Sync. I have tried to find documentation on this and have been unsuccessful. How do I make Firefox engineers aware of this issue? Before you ask me the obvious, yes I am able to connect to the Internet and search the web. I just don't know what caused this failure to connect to the server issue and how to resolve it.
Chosen solution
another follow-up: can you try to enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named services.sync.clusterURL, right-click it and reset this preference & finally restart firefox once?
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hello, when you type about:sync-log into the address bar of the affected device and open the latest one or two error logs, can you copy their contents and put them into http://pastebin.mozilla.org/ or a similar service and paste a link here on the forum? this would be very helpful in assessing the problem. thank you!
This is what I copied from the address bar http://pastebin.mozilla.org/7547101. I hope this works. Please let me know. I can always get a screen capture or screencast using Jing if need be.
thanks for following up with this piece of information - this might be a server issue, sync engineers are currently looking into that.
Modified by philipp
Chosen Solution
another follow-up: can you try to enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named services.sync.clusterURL, right-click it and reset this preference & finally restart firefox once?
It worked!! Thank you so much! Now, may I ask what happened? I feel like if this sort of thing happens again in the future I will have a better understanding of exactly what services.sync.clusterURL is and why resetting it resolves syncing issues. FYI I deleted some empty folders that were created when this whole issue started and forced an immediate sync and the problem device was no longer a problem. I performed this action on my laptop i.e. the problem device and on my desktop PC so I could thoroughly test the two-way communication and after syncing on either device the changes were reflected on the other.
i think what happened here was a technical outage at one of the sync servers. normally what happens then is that affected users get automatically migrated to another node (which apparently didn't work in your case). resetting the preference in about:config then triggered the migration manually.
I have the same problem tried the above but nothing has changed. The message I get across the bottom reads 'Synchronisation has not been able to complete during the last 14 days, Please check network settings.' And the preferences button is there which I click which opens the options window, I then close it and the message has gone. I am using FF 31.3.00 this has been happening for about 3 weeks.
Modified by netsniper