[Mozilla Enterprise] Roaming Firefox bookmarks

[William Spratt]

Hi Marjorie,

For our static PC's, each user has a private folder on a network share, and we have a log on script that redirects Firefox to set up a then use a profile set up in the network share.  That contains the bookmarks, so in effect we have "roaming" bookmarks.  It also contains saved passwords and the like.

Two drawback to this method:

First, you currently can't have two active sessions.  If a user logs onto two machines, they can only one can have Firefox using the network share profile.  The other will need to have a local profile if they need to use Firefox on both.  If you try to open Firefox using the network share profile on a second machine, you get a prompt to say Firefox is already running and gives you an option to close it (although that won't do anything as it's on a different PC).  Obviously it's just picking up the .lock file, so doesn't know to tell the user they have it open on another machine.

Second, it requires the network share to be available.  That means for no-static devices like laptops, the VPN needs to be active and secure, then (if you are like us and map a drive to the network share because of legacy stuff) the drive needs to be successfully mapped.  Otherwise you get an error message saying the profile is missing or inaccessible.

We do use Firefox profile synch for users that need to have Firefox open on two machines concurrently, and also for some laptop users.  The drawback to that is our Information Security policy forbids allowing saved logins to be included as it will leave our control and go under Mozilla's (as a Third Party).

Hope this helps.

Regards

Will

Will Spratt
IT Science Support Specialist
Tel:         01904 46 2631

From: Enterprise <enterprise-bounces at mozilla.org> On Behalf Of Menacker, Marjorie S.
Sent: 11 July 2019 17:10
To: enterprise at mozilla.org
Subject: [Mozilla Enterprise] Roaming FireFox bookmarks

What is the best way to save and share the bookmarks for FireFox withoug creating a sync account?  We are using Windows 10 in both laptops/desktops and VDI environment that I want shared between environments.  I have tried renaming the default profiles (and updating the profiles.ini) folder to firefox.default, then copying the places.sqlite file and bookmarkbackups to and from a server share each time Firefox launches or closes.  This seems to work fine a few times, and then we will get a message that it's unable to read the bookmarks and history.  When going to Import and Backup menu, all of the previous backups are present, but an error appears when trying to restore them - "Unable to process the backup file".

Subsequently if I use the c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe -p command to create a new profile, copy the bookmarkbackups folder to the new profile, I can successfully restore the old bookmarks.

Is there any functional way to share the bookmarks file without creating a Firefox sync account?  Can we redirect the bookmarks to that network share?  Thanks.

Marjorie S. Menacker
Application Delivery Specialist
McGuireWoods LLP
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