Firefox Sync Unknown Error?
Over the last few weeks of having to reinstall my OS, I've had major problems getting Firefox Sync to do its thing and synchronise a couple of years worth of data. After a few minutes, I am receiving the following error at the bottom of the page: "Sync encountered an error while synchronising: Unknown error. Sync will automatically retry this action." Which is not particularly helpful in solving the problem!
As there are no tools provided to edit data "in the cloud", there is also no way I can see to remedy this by deleting any corrupt entries. Which does not seem very promising option to me for backing up this data, some of which is very important!
Firstly, I was wondering if anyone else has been receiving this error? And secondly, I was wondering if there was any way of manually downloading the data outside of Firefox if there isn't a remedy? I would really not like to use the nuclear option and reset my account. If it is possible to get it back then I'll be able to make a safe backup and transfer my information to xmarks, which I have found is more reliable. I guess you could argue I should be making backups like these in the first place if this information is so important, but I trusted the convenience and reliability of Mozilla to handle my data, especially as before Weave came along I had never realised how valuable keeping my history between computers can be!
I am having this problem between Mac, Ubuntu and Windows versions of Firefox 4. Hope you can understand my frustrations.
Modified by Gazbook
All Replies (10)
I hope that I am not too late here. Also, not quite sure that this will work for you as well. I have this problem every once in awhile, and resetting sync key and changing password seems to help somehow. As I understand it, this happens when you have a lot of data to sync.
This worked for me:
- In Firefox menu: go to bookmarks -> Organize bookmarks. Take there a bakup of your bookmarks. to stay on the safe side for your bookmarks.
- Go to the sync tab in your firefox preferences (edit -> preferences)
Uncheck everything except passwords and close.
- Do a sync by double clicking the sync in the status bar (bottom of firefox)
- Go back to the sync tab and reenable one by one what you need, doing a sync in between.
That worked for me (using FF 4.0). Strange that it works.
Same problem for me - for several days.
Before visiting this page I logged on to the 'manage my account' service for Firefox Sync - I did not do anything, just a root around for info, I started to request more space - but canceled before sending the request.
I then Googled the problem - and this brought me here - and strangely the error had, in the intervening time, gone away and sync was working correctly without needing to try any of the two fixes above.
It seemed that logging in to my sync account did the trick - perhaps some form of stored password/ID/key had got deleted or corrupted.
Who knows!?
SOLVED for me It seems to be a problem if you have to much Data on your Mozilla Services Account (was 25MB for me).
The following solution solved the Problem for me (on all my platforms (Windows, Mac)).
- Clean up your Bookmarks on your Master-PC
- Sorting by names etc.
- Log into your Mozilla Services account at https://services.mozilla.com/
- Use the option "purge" to delete the saved data
- Do a fresh sync
- Now the Message should be history
Have Fun
Hello there, I would like to know if anyone got any news about this. I'm having the same problem, and my data is really important to me as well =X
I have an old Back up on Xmarks (or I think I do), but it is quite old, maybe from the time I started using Firefox Sync. I didn't know that my data problems could get this serious... If I could, as suggested, access my data on the cloud I would be able to back it up.
Any help will be really appreciated, thanks in advance.
Yeah, I was suffering from this error, too, from quite a while though it wasn't critical because I've migrated to LastPass ;P
But that error popping up continuously was quite bothersome. I tried jringoot's solution but it didn't work for me :'(
I have migrated to LastPass from Xmarks since LP swallowed Xm. I remembered reading somewhere LP's caution not to use any other service to sync passwords. So, I figured that might be sticking in FF Sync's craw and disabled (unchecked) only Passwords from Sync's list.
Voila! No more error! It worked! Thanks jringoot for pointing in the right direction.
Cheers folks
Modified by WaterSheep
Same here... I used jringoot advice and tried where my problem was and tried activating/deactivating different items. I've pinpointed the problem with my bookmarks. If I uncheck them, Sync works ok, but when I check it =>Unknown error... Now, how on earth can I fix this?
EDT: I've tried erasing all bookmarks (I have a backup) with no luck. I don't have any bookmark so how can it fail now??? EDT2: I've cleared sync data on cluster and it syched ok, but trying to restore and sync old data gives me same error. Tried two sync again and it worked! I hope it lasts at least a couple of days!
Modified by djago
All of these answers seem overly complicated. I have a small number of bookmarks, and make very few changes, yet I get this error pretty much every single day. If I manually hit "retry" a few times, the process will eventually go through without an error. I have been assuming that it is simply due to the servers' inability to keep up with demand, now that sync is built into all new releases. Increase capacity, please, or post clearer instructions on using your own server. It's getting annoying.
Hi guys, I had the same problem for the last few weeks. Finally I decided to sit down and take a closer look. First I got to the sync log by opening page about:sync-log.
I found the error line and started to google for any information I found in this error line. After reading quite few posts I realized that my problem might be related to corrupted bookmarks database file. I also noticed that I cannot add bookmarks manually using e.g. Ctrl + D.
Then I decided (after making bookmarks copy) to remove the file completly and guess what? Everything is ok now. Synchronization is working back again.
File that has to be removed is: places.sqlite from the folder that you can navigate to using manu Firefox -> Help -> Troubleshooting Information and then clicking button Open Containing Folder from the Application Basis area.
Br. michu