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I'd like to move Firefox 4 profiles from an old Windows box to Linux and see all the profile data I had on Windows (bookmarks, passwords and everything) on the new workstation. I can't figure out myself if copying the profile folder "as is" to the new location (Linux) is the right way to do this data migration.

I found this article and this, but it is not specified if profile portability is guaranted between different platforms or not.

Do you have any idea?

Thanks

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3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You can use Firefox Sync.

Free browser add-on that lets you stay in sync with your Firefox. Access your history, passwords, bookmarks and even open tabs across all your devices.

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I don't have to sync a computer and a mobile phone. – Guandalino May 15 '11 at 23:24
It will sync all your computers too – Simon Sheehan May 15 '11 at 23:28
@Guandalino see my edit, it's included with FF4. It's not explicitly for phone/computer it's for computer/computer. – jonsca May 15 '11 at 23:29
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I went to go check yours out so I was reading the description... I had forgotten they were going to include that now! Well, that product includes history info so yours is probably the best option. – jonsca May 15 '11 at 23:31
up vote 3 down vote

Most of the profile data is based on text files anyway, the only issue would be the history sqlite database, which might not be Linux compatible, though I would expect it to be.

Update: I dug a little bit deeper, and found out that there will be discrepancies regarding the following profile items:

  • compatibility.ini : not so serious, but some compatibility information will be lost. Can be easily modified to adjust directory/path names.

  • extensions.ini : Because you have absolute paths to your extensions in this file, you will probably lose track of all your extensions/addons if you carry this 1/1 over to your linux user directory.
    Nothing that can't be fixed with a simple search&replace, though.

  • prefs.js: There are a couple of entries here like browser.download.dir, browser.download.lastDir or dwhelper.storagedirectory which can be re-set easily once on linux.

  • search.json: Almost all search plugin meta contains absolute path names. Again, nothing disastrous. Like the extensions.ini, you can S&R.

The rest of it are either binary files or sqlite databases which can safely be transported to your linux dir, or meta text files that contain no OS-specific detail.

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So are you saying there won't be Windows/Linux path compatibility issues? – Guandalino May 15 '11 at 22:29
@Guandalino check out the updated answer. – Bora May 16 '11 at 8:56
already done (and upvoted). – Guandalino May 16 '11 at 9:31
up vote 1 down vote

It doesn't keep track of history (I don't believe), and you have to sign in, but XMarks will allow you to synchronize between the two.

Edit: There's no need, FF4 includes the Sync feature (proposed by Simon in his answer) with it now enter image description here

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