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Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger |
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Copying Firefox Settings In Windows XP |
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Chronogical Blog Entries: |
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Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 23:53:53 +1000Windows XP is still the most common OS in the corporate environment. However, Firefox is rapidly becoming the browser of choice. Nevertheless, if you move to a new machine, you may want to take your settings with you. |
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Of course in the windows environment there are lots of gadgets to help copy the settings of your outlook mailbox etc, etc. But you will have to organise the Firefox settings yourself.
It's all pretty simple, provided you know where to look.
If you have a standard Windows XP setup, this is quite easy. The settings (include passwords, bookmarks etc) are stored in the Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles folder in the applications data folder. The applications data folder will be specified in the environment variable %appdata%. You can see this folder if you enter the following commands at the Windows prompt on the old machine:
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C:\>echo %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles C:\Documents and Settings\frednurk\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles cd "%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles" C:\Documents and Settings\frednurk\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles>dir Volume in drive C is OS Volume Serial Number is 8AD1-65FB Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\frednurk\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles 01/05/2009 04:39 PM <DIR> . 01/05/2009 04:39 PM <DIR> .. 01/05/2009 04:55 PM <DIR> khql0gma.default 0 File(s) 0 bytes 3 Dir(s) 145,720,651,776 bytes free |
The folder "b2g9kcq8.default" is a random word similar to the random files that are generated by the Unix mktemp command.
If you install a brand new version of Firefox on the new machine you will see a folder with a different name. It might look something like this:
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Volume in drive C has no label. Volume Serial Number is 84C6-6E12 Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\frednurk\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles 29/11/2006 08:11 AM <DIR> . 29/11/2006 08:11 AM <DIR> .. 01/05/2009 04:36 PM <DIR> b2g9kcq8.default 0 File(s) 0 bytes 3 Dir(s) 23,032,553,472 bytes free |
In order to copy the settings you just have to make sure that Firefox is not running (check both machines). Then delete the folder "b2g9kcq8.default" on the new machine. Next copy the old folder "khql0gma.default" to the new machine and rename it to the new folder "b2g9kcq8.default". Don't forget to delete the old folder "khql0gma.default", otherwise someone else (who gets the machine after you have finished with it) might be able to read your passwords and other information.
Note: the names will be different for each installation.
I personally prefer to use cygwin commands to do the copying. Just use a Microsoft network share (for example \\mscrap\data\foo\fred) to copy the data.
On the old machine enter:
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cd "`cygpath 'C:\Documents and Settings\frednurk\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles'`" tar cvfz //mscrap/data/foo/fred/temp.tar.gz * rm -Rf b2g9kcq8.default |
On the new machine, enter:
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cd "`cygpath 'C:\Documents and Settings\frednurk\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles'`" rm -Rf khql0gma.default tar xvfz //mscrap/data/foo/fred/temp.tar.gz mv b2g9kcq8.default khql0gma.default |
You will make life a lot easier for yourself if you use copy and paste for those paths!
Notes
Some of this is guess work on my behalf. Please let me know if any of it is incorrect:
- On Ubuntu settings are stored in $HOME/.mozilla/firefox. The convention is similar. However there is a profile.ini file and a pluginreg.dat file. The The profile.ini file is an XML file which holds configuration information about profiles. The pluginreg.dat file is a text file with details of plugins
- Also I have seen more than one .default folder in Ubuntu (but not in Windows). When there is more than one folder, the actual default appears to be specified in the profile.ini folder
- I am not certain that the file has to be renamed. I just didn't want to experiment too much. However it is possible that the setttings would be ok if you copied the directory as is (without renaming it).