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symbolic link for places.sqlite respect

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Hallo,

I have two firefox profiles with which I wish to share bookmarks. An easy solution is to create a symbolic link replacing the one places.sqlite file with a link to the file in the other profile, thus we're always just using one set of bookmarks and all is happy. However, Firefox keeps overriding my link; labeling the file "corrupt" and replacing it with a cached version. I need to know how to stop firefox from overriding my input and respect the changes made in the profile folder. I need to disable whatever mechanism is going on that is checking the files and reconstituting them.

                                Tak!
Hallo, I have two firefox profiles with which I wish to share bookmarks. An easy solution is to create a symbolic link replacing the one places.sqlite file with a link to the file in the other profile, thus we're always just using one set of bookmarks and all is happy. However, Firefox keeps overriding my link; labeling the file "corrupt" and replacing it with a cached version. I need to know how to stop firefox from overriding my input and respect the changes made in the profile folder. I need to disable whatever mechanism is going on that is checking the files and reconstituting them. Tak!

All Replies (6)

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I think you will just have to copy the file when FF is closed.

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Yeah, the concern with merging, import /export, and copying is that I lose adds and/ or deletes depending on which way I copy. If I go one way all the deleted bookmarks from one profile are added back, and if I go the other way I lose all the additonal bookmarks I have created in the other profile. I've had horrible experience with synch doing just that too, that's why I want to share bookmarks locally. Saw a link to set up one's own synch server, but that's just crazy overkill for a very simple concern. The removal of the "recent bookmarks" feature didn't help matters either.

There's got to be code in there somewhere that compares to a cached copy (or similar) and then replaces the link. I need to modify that bit so it does what I want.

I'm gonna keep playing, but hopefully someone knows where to look. Thanks,

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Forgot to add, since I'm in Linux I'm going to try locking the file against changes first

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I still have "Recently Bookmarked". If you want to keep bookmarks from both profiles, you could use export to/import from html. That would become very cumbersome, of course.

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The concern with the import/ export is that if I start with the same bookmarks, delete a bunch of bad links from one profile; if I export those to another profile it either creates duplicates of everything as well as then not reflecting the deleted links that are still contained within the importing profile, or I have to delete all the bookmarks from the importing profile and replace them with the exported file, and I lose any additions that might have been made to the importing profile.

I tried several ways of linking the places.sqlite profile files to a single database and making the links "immutable", which solved the overwriting concern, but created others.

There's just too many dependencies and recovery operations going on - I'll never untangle it all.

It's disappointing. I think this should be an option when creating a new profile (with appropriate ownership): Do you wish to share bookmarks and history with existing profiles? Yes - share bookmarks and history database between profiles

        All profiles? Y/N  Or, specify which profiles to share:

No - create a new separate bookmarks and history database for this profile

Ah well.... Lot's more important concerns in the world...

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and... firefox randomly changed fonts for the one line there...