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The author published this entry on Thursday 12 July, 2007 at 5:55 pm. It's been filed in the Linux + Softwarecategory

How To Synchronize Firefox Between Linux and Windows

This short guide is intended for users who dual-boot between Linux and Windows. In my case, it is Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP on my Acer Aspire 5102 laptop.

Although I am a heavy user of delicious bookmarking, I like to conveniently line up all of my routine websites like Google Reader, Google AdSense, and Shoemoney’s SERP Tool on the Bookmark Toolbar. I also tend to cycle through many Firefox extensions, just to try out new things. Furthermore, I have a massive amount of form information saved on the Firefox Password Manager to quickly check my accounts on a wide span of websites. So keeping all of this information consistent between my operating systems saves me time since I don’t have to manually synchronize them.

The Firefox Profile

The Firefox browser saves all your personal settings into a folder called a profile. This includes bookmarks, passwords, and extensions — everything that you need to migrate to another OS or machine. This profile is what we’re going to hook up between Linux and Windows, so that whatever happens in Firefox on one OS occurs in the other.

Decide which operating system’s profile you want to be the default, because we will be linking the other operating system into it.

Profile Location in Windows

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default

Profile Location in Firefox

~/.mozilla/firefox/

The profile.ini File

Now boot into the operating system that DOES NOT contain your default profile. Then locate the profile.ini file in the folder indicated above and open it with a text editor.

Insert the location of the default profile where it says Path=. And then change IsRelative=1 to IsRelative=0.

You are all set now. Restart Firefox and experience the beauty of synchronized browsing between Linux and Windows.

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