Firefox Sync doesn't work properly in MATE

Firefox Sync works fine on my iMac and iPad2, but not in Ubuntu MATE 16.04 or 16.10 on a Raspberry Pi 3.

I can register it as a device but Sync only downloads some of my 800+ bookmarks and does not include the folders in which they were arranged.

This is very frustrating and precludes using Firefox as the primary Web browser in MATE. Anyway, FF is very slow compared to Chromium, but my bookmarks are important to my workflow.

Any ideas of a fix, or is this not yet possible?

Hello @stuzog

As a FYI I am also using FF sync and have ~200 bookmarks and am not experiencing this issue.

I have also tried moving to Vivaldi which is pretty neat and compatible with them bookmarks. I would advise into deploying it on your machine via Software Boutique and starting to play with it.

Of course, this is not the answer you’re expending but it can hopefully help you gain time.

Cheers,

Thanks @DLS. I’ve installed Chromium 50 as described this post, and as I don’t want to sync my bookmarks via Google, imported an HTML bookmarks export from Chromium on the iMac.

So now I have a faster-than-Firefox Web browser with my current bookmarks, but the FF Sync issue is still not solved.

Hello @stuzog

Kind of basic but has this ever worked? For example if you boot a regular UBUNTU DVD/LIVE and redo the same operations, what’s the outcome?

Cheers,

@DLS – On a Raspberry Pi3?

1 Like

Am sure that you can dd a Ubuntu ISO on a USB stick and then boot from it.

Otherwise am sure that you can plug a IDE DVD-ROM into a USB adapter and then into the USB port of your Pi3 and fire that away.

Can’t you?

Sounds possible, but I don’t have an IDE DVD-ROM. Wouldn’t it be easier just to burn an SD Card and boot from that?

However, as I now have the bookmarks I need and can update them manually occasionally, why would I want to do that? I prefer to leave that to folks more expert in Linux than nooby-me.

Well it wouldn’t “be easier just to burn an SD Card and boot from that” as not only would you need to write the ISO on the SD Card but you would also need to make it boot-able which involves more tweaking that might not be up-to-speed with your skillset.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a hard task to do what you said but it’s much less painful to put that DVD in and boot from it, effort wise.

Of course, the goal of my reply would be to ultimately fix your original issue (Or find the root cause) but, ya, you’re right: if you’re happy with your current outcome then nothing more can be done.

Cheers,

Hi @DLS. Burning an SD card is the first thing a Raspberry Pi user
learns to do. There is much excellent software available for OS X and
Windows that perform this flawlessly and there is no tweaking involved.
As for putting that DVD in – in what? The Raspberry Pi has no inbuilt
DVD slot and I have no external DVD unit.

Thanks for your intention to help – I apprciate that. But the issue
remains unresolved.

And, even if you had an external drive, how would you persuade the Pi to boot from it?
Derek