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Self-Hosting a Firefox Sync Server

blog.diego.dev

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Re: Self-Hosting a Firefox Sync Server

#42

Post by jeroenhd »

gsliepen wrote: post #37

Congrats on getting this self-hosted. However, the solution looks more complicated than necessary. You shouldn't have to set up a database server and Docker just to sync a little bit of data. Ideally, there would be a sync server implementation that uses SQLite and can just run stand-alone.

In theory you could set up a simple sync server that implements the necessary endpoints and nothing more, nothing less. Guides like these run the official, Mozilla-maintained sync server, which is obviously based on serving millions of users rather than being a minimal implementation for someone in a home lab.

One could fork https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs, take out the plumbing, and reimplement it all without a secondary database and the Google Cloud base architecture, I'm sure, but like with so many things, you'd first need to gather a group of people with enough interest and spare time to do the development.

Re: Self-Hosting a Firefox Sync Server

#43

Post by jeroenhd »

sandreas wrote: post #3

Thank you, this is the only thing what slowed me down switching to Librewolf. Seems that MySQL and Spanner are the only supported DB-Engines by now, but there are efforts to support sqlite and Postgres[1]. I really hope these get merged soon, would make it much easier to backup your whole sync storage contained in one single sqlite file. However, a multiuser instance would probably be better stored via postgres due t…

In the documentation (https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs?tab=readm...), it looks like updating an about:config variable should be all you need to do:

> In Firefox, go to about:config. Change identity.sync.tokenserver.uri to http://localhost:5000/1.0/sync/1.5.

You'd need to update the URL to match your own, of course

Re: Self-Hosting a Firefox Sync Server

#44

Post by layoric »

eloisius wrote: post #40
3np wrote: post #2

Note that this setup still relies on Mozilla infrastructure for several surrounding services for auth, email, account metadata, etc. https://github.com/dan-r/syncstorage-rs-docker/blob/main/app... It's a good start though and as long as you're OK migrating your account you can plug those in later. Fully self-hosting all the components is just as doable but a little bit more involved. Compared to when I last set it up…

It looks like you used to be able to configure Firefox iOS to use a different FxA/Sync server, but I tried to find the setting and it's gone. > For Firefox for iOS version 9.0 or later: > - Go to Settings. > - Tap on the Version number 5 times. > - Tap on “Advance Account Settings” > - Enter your content-server URL > - Toggle “Use Custom Account Service” to on. https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos…

Is the different names options under “Advanced Sync Settings” the same thing just with different name? “Use Custom FxA Content Server”?

Re: Self-Hosting a Firefox Sync Server

#45

Post by kevincox »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #41

It should be possible to use syncthing to achieve sync across multiple devices, without having a third-party server - even if untrusted, right?

No, any concurrent modifications would cause problems.

The main difficulty with sync is conflict resolution and none of Syncthing's solutions work well for the things that Firefox syncs.

Re: Self-Hosting a Firefox Sync Server

#50

Post by maxlin »

I've use Firefox as my tertiary browser option, for some specific uses like for example I have it always have an VPN plugin on. But I'm starting to feel anything in its vicinity should be avoided like hostile malware, regardless if an attempt to remove bad parts of it is made.

A corporation can do a lot of bad stuff with their software and terms, and most have probably normalized that in their mind. But after now Firefox for example implicitly lawfully claims all the google docs you edit as their IP, that should be a bridge too far for anyone using it even slightly professionally. God help if you also use it as a person that Mozilla considers you their political blood enemy (which isn't exactly hard nowadays). Not exactly the Firefox 1.0 release I still remember. Not even as benign as its worst enemy it was built to be against at the time. Truly Dark Knight -esque.

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