Firefox Sync Server

This page is about special operations required in order to install Mozilla Sync Server.

Newer versions of Mozilla Firefox feature bookmarks, passwords and browsing history synchronization between all your computers and devices. Mozilla Foundation provides a public Sync server, but you can host your own one if you want.

Prerequisites

Dependencies

Before proceeding, you need to install python2, python2-virtualenv, sqlite3, mercurial and make, all available in the official repositories.

Accessibility

If you intend to use your server with itinerant clients, you should install it on an Internet reachable computer.

Administration Rights

All installation instructions are commands relying on the superuser privileges, so open a terminal and type:

$ su -
Password: 
# 

Installation

Mozilla Sync Server depends on Python 2 during installation. Arch Linux provides Python 3 as default Python version so there are special tweaks needed before running Mozilla Sync Server setup. Setup process creates an isolated Python environment in which all necessary dependencies are downloaded and installed. Afterwards, running the server only relies on the isolated Python environment, independently of the system-wide Python.

Python preparation

Mozilla Sync Server setup needs Python 2.6 or newer. In default configuration, /usr/bin/python is a symbolic link to /usr/bin/python3 whereas Python 2 is /usr/bin/python2.

Before running setup, we must check the link and change it if necessary:

# cd /usr/bin
# ls -l python

    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7  5 sept. 07:04 python -> python3

# ln -sf python2 python

Setup

Installation instructions (adapted from Mozilla Howto, Copyright 2010 Mozilla Foundation, CC BY-SA 2.5):

# mkdir -p /opt/weave
# cd /opt/weave
# hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/services/server-full

      ... source repository cloning messages ...

# cd server-full
# make build

      ... many build messages, including harmless warnings ...

      ... end of the successful build messages:

Building the app 
  Checking the environ   [ok]
  Updating the repo   [ok]
  Building Services dependencies 
    Getting server-core     [ok]
    Getting server-reg     [ok]
    Getting server-storage     [ok]  [ok]
  Building External dependencies   [ok]
  Now building the app itself   [ok]
[done]

Check the end of the build messages, they should state "[done]". Otherwise, look at the first error messages, they give you hints on the problem and how to solve it.

Python initial state restoration

# cd /usr/bin
# ln -sf python3 python

Configuration

Server-side

Configuration files are used to define where databases and logs will be created. We will place databases in /opt/weave/data and log files in /var/log/weave, so we must create the directories.

# mkdir /opt/weave/data /var/log/weave

At least two configuration files must be changed in /opt/weave/server-full in order to reflect these choices: development.ini and etc/sync.conf.

In development.ini, locate the line:

args = ('/tmp/sync-error.log',)

and change it to:

args = ('/var/log/weav/sync-error.log',)

In etc/sync.conf, locate the line:

sqluri = sqlite:////tmp/test.db

and change it to:

sqluri = sqlite:////opt/weave/data/sync.db

This statement appears twice in the file, around line 12 and around line 24. Both should be modified.

Near line 15, we bump the disk quota from 5 to 25 MB:

quota_size = 25600

Near line 28, the fallback node URL must reflect our server's name (here server-name.domain-name). Change:

fallback_node = http://localhost:5000/

to:

fallback_node = http://server-name.domain-name:5000/