Support

WebDAV
Free servers
Old extensions
Auto-Receive
Auto-Send
Passwords
XBEL
SFTP support
FTP servers
Local files
Authentication issues
Sending
Receiving
Exception messages
Debugging
Stops working

WebDAV

How to install WebDAV on specific web servers is beyond this site. However, it is pretty straightforward for most servers.

With Apache 2.0 and above just follow the instructions in the standard manual. But in case you're struggling with Apache 2.0 here's an example of what to put in your httpd.conf:

LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so
DavLockDB "C://tmp/DAVLock"
DAVMinTimeout 600
<Directory "C:/webroot/bookmarks">
  Dav on
  #These four lines are required for authentication
  #Uncomment them only once you have it working
  #AuthType Basic
  #AuthName Bookmarks
  #AuthUserFile "C:/Apache2.0/conf/dav.password"
  #Require valid-user
</Directory>

Assuming your web site is located in the "C:/webroot" folder this will enable the bookmarks folder for use with SyncPlaces. Once it is working you can then uncomment the 4 lines indicated and add some authentication details into the dav.password file.

Free servers

If you have your own web site with a third party then check to see if this comes with ftp for uploading pages. If so then this may work with SyncPlaces to allow you to upload your bookmarks to your own web site.

It is also worth checking to see if your ISP or email provider provides online disk space. In many cases these use WebDAV. If yours does then it may be worth checking to see if it is suitable for use with SyncPlaces

There are also a number of sites that provide free online disk space, either on their own or as part of other services. One that I can recommend that works well with SyncPlaces is GMX. This is a free, no strings attached, email service that also provides disk space. You may find the email part useful, but if not then sign up for this using ficticious details and completely ignore the email part. For myself in the UK the following SyncPlaces settings worked:

Server > Connection > Protocol: https
Server > Connection > Host: storage-file-eu.gmx.com
Advanced > Workarounds > Receiving: Old
When prompted: User='Your GMX email address', Password='Your GMX password'

If this doesn't work for you it could be that the "Host" is different in your country. If so then try looking in the GMX File Manager help for how to connect a Network Drive using Windows

Working with Bookmark Sync and Sort (BSS) and older extensions

As you'd expect the XBEL produced by BSS does not include any of the new features introduced in Firefox 3. So if you synchronise with BSS you're going to lose all of that information (in particular tags, annotations, queries) as well as things BSS never supported (date added and modified). Other features such as keywords and livemarks are preserved, and the unsorted/unfiled bookmarks and tags folders from Firefox 3 are imported into BSS as normal folders.

When working with BSS you may see some errors when importing/downloading into BSS. You'll probably see a 'Delete Toolbar' message because the Firefox 3 toolbar has a different name and so the old one is deleted. Strangely, this message also appears even when merging into BSS.

You will probably also get a nasty looking message about RDFService errors. This is because BSS used RDF ids for each folder/bookmark etc, but the Firefox Places system doesn't use this anymore so this information isn't there when importing/downloading into BSS. However, it should still work fine though, so you can just ignore this error.

Auto-Receive on startup issues

If your browser has problems when you use the 'Receive on startup' option it is generally due to conflicts with other extensions. SyncPlaces uses the officially sanctioned method of registering for browser startup events . But this method is poorly documented and has limitations, so many extensions use various algorithms to detect when the browser has started, which can cause conflicts with SyncPlaces.

On the Advanced/Workarounds tab there is a 'Automation' section. If you are having problems then try using the 'Startup Compatible' option. This tells SyncPlaces to also use an alternative mechanism to detect when the browser has started, and so may reduce the potential for conflicts with other extensions.

Warning: Using the 'Compatible' option when you do not have any problems may cause side-effects to occur. Also when you first use this option you may have to restart the browser a couple of times before it operates properly.

Auto-Send on shutdown issues

If the 'Send on shutdown' doesn't appear to be working (no transfer window ever appears on shutdown), then you may have a rare issue whereby closing Firefox does not allow the transfer time to complete and shuts down immediately.

On the Advanced/Workarounds tab there is an 'Automation' section. If you are having problems then try using the 'Shutdown Compatible' option. This tells SyncPlaces to halt the shutdown, run the transfer and then shutdown Firefox.

Note that because SyncPlaces cannot distinguish between a shutdown and a restart, when using 'Compatible' a restart (e.g. after installing a new extension) will simply shutdown Firefox and you will have to manually start it up again. Also note that OS X permanently suffers from this issue and so the 'Compatible' option is permanently switched on (even if you select 'Normal') - so with Firefox on OS X so you will have to always manually start Firefox when restarting.

Warning: Using the 'Compatible' option when you do not have any problems may cause side-effects to occur.

Password not stored

SyncPlaces stores passwords in the Firefox password system. If you find that your passwords are not being stored, then tell Firefox to remember passwords for sites and try again:

picture of the Firefox security options tab

Note: Encryption passwords are stored with a "Site" name of "chrome://syncplaces" and there may be several of these for each profile, so don't delete these entries.

Favicons have disappeared

For each bookmark SyncPlaces synchronises the url of its favicon (if there is one). If the bookmark doesn't have a favicon associated with it (e.g. If you are synchronising with other browsers using XBEL, or have turned off favicons on the advanced tab, or used an older version of SyncPlaces that didn't support favicons), then a local favicon cache is used to try to retrieve them.

If your favicons still go missing, then try my CheckPlaces extension. As well as being a generally useful bookmarks extension, this will also restore many, if not most, of your missing favicons.

Invalid XBEL bookmarks

If the message "Invalid or corrupted bookmarks received" or "Invalid XML, or missing 'xbel' element" or "No bookmarks to import" is displayed with a link to this page, then SyncPlaces has not recognised the bookmark file as being a valid XBEL file.

If you are 'importing' a local file then check that the file is not corrupted and is a valid XML file in XBEL format.

If you 'receiving' then read the information below about problems when receiving.

SFTP support

I've tried looking at implementing sftp but there is no support within Firefox and it is a very difficult thing to do especially across all platforms. So I've no plans to support it at this time.

However, on Windows (there may be similar solutions for other platforms) there is a utility you can use to provide sftp support: http://www.bitvise.com/ftp-bridge. Basically you run this bridge on your PC and configure it to direct connections to your sftp server, Then configure SyncPlaces to ftp to 'localhost' and the bridge will then sftp your bookmarks and passwords to your server.

Using an FTP server

Unfortunately, I've found that Firefox has very poor support for ftp servers, and the official way of communicating with them does not always work, especially if you are using a proxy server like Microsoft's ISA server. But I have found some older methods from Firefox 1 that may work for you, and some tips even if you don't have ftp issues:

Note: When testing the options below try without the 'Send Safely' and 'Only ... if changed' options, and also do not 'Send HTML' or 'Send XBEL'. Once you have everything working then you can try using these options again.

If you look on the Advanced/Workarounds tab you will see two sections: 'Receiving mechanism' and 'Sending mechanism'. The default for both sending and receiving is 'Normal'.

If Firefox hangs or crashes when sending or receiving (proxy servers like Microsoft's ISA server can cause this), then try 'Proxy fix' for both Sending and Receiving.

If you cannot receive bookmarks then try 'Old' in the Receiving section. If you cannot send bookmarks then try 'Old' in the Sending section. Both use an older system for communicating with the server, which can sometimes be unreliable. If you still have problems then check the sections below for more help.

Depending on which ftp server you are using some errors such as 'Path not found' are actually authentication errors in disguise. So check your login details in this case.

When Firefox connects to an ftp server it does not close the connection when it has finished. Also it may open extra connections for the HTML, XBEL, JSON, and SHA1 files that may be sent. So if you have many browsers connecting at the same time you may run out of connections. There are two things you can try: In Firefox on the about:config page you can set "network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout" to be a low number as the default is a huge 300 seconds! I set mine to 0 and it works for me, but you may need a higher number if you have a slow connection. Another option is to set the 'timeout' for ftp connections on your ftp server to be a small number. With Filezilla Server I use 5 seconds and it works for me, but again you may need a bigger number for a slower connection.

Using the 'file' protocol

Common pitfalls to avoid are:

Incorrect read/write/create permissions for the path you're trying to use.
UNC paths are not allowed. You must map a drive instead.

SyncPlaces is pretty dumb when it comes to networking and simply uses what Firefox provides. This means that if Firefox can't do it, SyncPlaces definitely can't. But it does mean you can try things in your browser first. So open up your browser and try out the following:

Create a plain text file with the word 'test' in. This should have the same name as the JSON file on the 'Server' tab and be placed where you were expecting your bookmarks to be saved. Then try to access this file directly in your browser using a uri of this form: file://path_to_json_file. For example on Windows enter something like: file://M:\shared_folder\syncplaces.json. On Linux or Mac you may have something like: file:///shared_folder/syncplaces.json.

If Firefox can't read the test file, then SyncPlaces won't be able to, so you'll need to solve whatever is stopping Firefox from reading the file first.

Authentication issues

If you have a firewall or proxy server that prompts you to enter login details, then Firefox may prompt you for these details the first time you use SyncPlaces after starting Firefox. This is not a bug, but just the way Firefox works and there's nothing I can do at present to prevent this.

If Firefox prompts you for your login details every time when sending or receiving you may have set Firefox to not remember passwords. In this case turn this option on temporarily to allow SyncPlaces to make an entry (see here) and then turn it off again afterwards.

If Firefox repeatedly prompts you and never succeeds then you may have more than one entry in your passwords for your server with the same 'Realm'. Open your Saved Passwords in Firefox and look for repeated "Site" entries like the following:http://yourhost (Your Realm). You should delete any unwanted entries, and if necessary delete and re-add entries such that the one for SyncPlaces appears last in the repeated list.

If you wish to use a different login to the one stored in your passwords, or do not wish to store your login details, or just do not wish to be prompted at all, then on the Server tab enter a host of the form: [user[:password]@]yourhost[:port]

Problems when sending

If you have a Web server and an error page is returned then this will be displayed in a new tab, so you can see what's gone wrong.

If you cannot send your bookmarks to the server then first of all check the settings on the 'Server' tab are correct: Check that you are using the correct hostname/ip address, and if necessary add a port number if you're not using the default (e.g. www.yourhost.com:8080).

Note that if you have 'Send safely' or 'Only synchronise bookmarks if they have changed', then it will be trying to receive something before sending. So it may be the receive that is failing and so turn these options off and try again.

Check that you have set up your FTP/Web Server to have permission to read from and write to the folder that will store the JSON file, and are allowed to create new files and read them via ftp/http(s). If you're using an ftp server then try swapping between PASV and Active connections to see if this works for you.

If you have an ftp server then check you can send files using an ftp client on the same computer as your browser. Again try swapping between PASV and Active to see if this makes any difference

Check that you have set up any firewalls and/or proxy servers between your browser and your server to allow files to be sent/received. Ensure there's nothing stopping files with mime-type 'application/json' or with the suffix '.json', for example. If you're unsure then try using SyncPlaces with a browser on your server to see if by-passing these allows it to work.

If you look on the Advanced/Workarounds tab you will the section; 'Sending mechanism'. The default is 'Normal', but if Firefox hangs or crashes when sending (proxy servers like Microsoft's ISA server can cause this), then try 'Proxy fix' for both Sending and Receiving. Otherwise try 'Old' in the Sending section to see if this works.

Some failures can be caused by 'bad' bookmarks. So try my CheckPlaces extension. This will allow you to find any 'bad' bookmarks and weed out any out of date or duplicate ones so you are not synchronising bookmarks you no longer need.

On your server, create a plain text file with the word 'test' in. This should have the same name as the JSON file on the 'Server' tab and be placed on your server where you were expecting your bookmarks to be saved. Now follow the instructions in the next section to see if you can see this file in Firefox.

Problems when receiving

If you think that you're sending okay, check that you really have sent your bookmarks correctly by ensuring the file at the JSON path on your server exists and has an up to date timestamp. If not then read the previous section first. You may also wish to use my CheckPlaces extension to clean up your bookmarks first (see previous section).

Open a browser tab and enter a url of the form: http://yourhost[:port]/path_to_json_file using the details you've put on the 'Server' tab.

When you enter the appropriate URL your JSON file should appear in your browser. If it does then double check the settings on your 'Server' tab, because SyncPlaces should receive your bookmarks. If it does but your problem is sending bookmarks, then I'm sorry but you're back at square one: It looks like your server is not set up correctly, or you may have a firewall/proxy that is stopping your bookmarks being sent

If you look on the Advanced/Workarounds tab you will the section; 'Receiving mechanism'. The default is 'Normal', but if Firefox hangs or crashes when sending (proxy servers like Microsoft's ISA server can cause this), then try 'Proxy fix' for both Sending and Receiving. Otherwise try 'Old' in the Receiving section to see if this works.

If you're still having problems then reading the next section may help ...

Exception messages

If you ever have an alert window appear with a horrible looking message such as:

[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) ...

This typically indicates you have received a corrupted file from your server. If this message appears when you first try to use SyncPlaces with a browser, then first of all check out the information in all the sections above (if you've not already done so) to see if there's a workaround or some other setting that could fix the problem for you.

If SyncPlaces has been working okay and then this type of message appears go to the Suddenly stops working section below.

Otherwise, if an alert window appears or you're having other problems then the first place to check is the 'Error Console' on the Tools menu. Ensure there are no messages in there relating to SyncPlaces or that appear when you use SyncPlaces.

If you check the 'Turn on debugging' option on the Advanced/Workarounds tab then additional messages will appear which may help me to debug your issue. In order to see all the messages that can appear in the console you may also have to change some Firefox settings: Open a new tab with a URL of "about:config". Set the following three options to 'true': javascript.options.showInConsole, javascript.options.strict, extensions.logging.enabled.

If there are any SyncPlaces related error messages on the console then email them to me for investigation. Then go to the next section to see if there are any corrupted or truncated files created when sending/receiving and let me know what you find as well.

Further Debugging

You can select where backups and temporary files are stored using the 'Select folder to backup to' option on the Advanced tab. By default this is inside your profile folder, e.g. on Windows this is "C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<uniqueid>.default\syncplaces\". SyncPlaces creates several files in this folder, then main ones being: syncplaces_backup.json, syncplaces_send.json, and syncplaces_received.json.

syncplaces_backup.json is a backup of your bookmarks taken when you click the Receive button or the Backup button.

syncplaces_send.json is a copy of what is just about to be sent to your server. So if you're having problems sending and this isn't being created, then there may be something wrong with SyncPlaces (check the error console as described above).

syncplaces_received.json is what was received from your web/ftp server. So if you have a problem receiving bookmarks then have a look for this file. If this doesn't exist or has an old timestamp then the communication with your server must have failed (see previous sections for help). If it does exist then try opening it in a text editor to see if it contains a JSON formatted file. If this file is truncated or corrupted you may have network problems.

In general comparing syncplaces_received.json with the JSON file on your server and also with the syncplaces_send.json and syncplaces_backup.json files may help you work out if there is a communication problem and whether it is during the send or the receive.

Divide and Conquer

If you have an error when you receive bookmarks there is a simple way of working out which bookmark(s) are causing the problem.

On the Advanced tab use the 'Select folder to synchronise' option to send/receive just part of your bookmarks. By starting at the top folder (try the Toolbar first and then the Main bookmarks) and working your way down you should be able to find out in which folder the problem lies. When you have found a folder that has the problem use the Bookmarks Organiser in Firefox to move half of the bookmarks into a different folder and try again. By repeating this you should then be able to quickly find a bookmark that is causing the problem. You can then send me the syncplaces_received.json for this one bookmark and I can see what is wrong with it.

Do not worry if you find that there are lots of bookmarks causing problems. Just send me any one of these to look at. If you find that when you use the 'Select folder to synchronise' option you do not have any problems anymore, then move any bookmarks in the 'Unsorted' folder into the main bookmarks using the Bookmarks Organiser and try again. If it is still okay then let me know because the problem may be with one of the 'special' Firefox bookmarks/folders.

Suddenly stops working

If it has been working for you in the past and then it suddenly stops receiving, then look to see if there have been any changes to your server's configuration, or network changes (e.g. proxy server changes).

Also it may be that there has been a communication error whilst sending (e.g. a computer crash mid-way through a send) causing a corrupted file to be sent to the server. In this case inspect the file on the server to see if it is the right size, and if it is unencrypted that the contents are the same as those in your local syncplaces folder (see last section). To correct this problem, you can force a send, to overwrite the file(s) on the server by temporarily 'unchecking' the appropriate 'Only synchronise ...' option on the Options tab.

If you are still having problems then go to the Exception messages section to see how to look at the Firefox error console for error messages, and the Further Debugging section to compare your syncplaces_received.json with the JSON file on your server and also with the syncplaces_send.json files.