Firefox Sync Server : create your own Sync Server

Software version
Operating System	Debian 7
Website	Firefox Sync Server Website
Last Update	05/09/2013
Others	MariaDB 5.5

1 Introduction

Firefox Sync, originally branded Mozilla Weave, is a browser synchronization feature that allows users to partially synchronize bookmarks, browsing history, preferences, passwords, filled forms, add-ons and the last 25 opened tabs across multiple computers.

It keeps user data on Mozilla servers, but the data is encrypted in such a way that no third party, not even Mozilla, can access user information.

Firefox Sync was originally an add-on for Mozilla Firefox 3.x and SeaMonkey 2.0, but it has been a built-in feature since Firefox 4.0 and SeaMonkey 2.1.

2 Prerequisite

First of all, we need to install those dependencies :

aptitude install python-dev mercurial python-virtualenv make gcc

Then we will install MariaDB.

To install MariaDB, it's unfortunately not embedded in Debian, so we'll add a repository. First of all, install a python tool to get aptkey :

aptitude

aptitude install python-software-properties

Then let's add this repository (https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/) :

apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xcbcb082a1bb943db add-apt-repository 'deb http://mirrors.linsrv.net/mariadb/repo/10.0/debian wheezy main'

We're now going to change apt pinning to prioritize MariaDB's repository :

/etc/apt/preferences.d/mariadb

Package: * Pin: release o=MariaDB Pin-Priority: 1000

Then install MariaDB :

aptitude

aptitude update aptitude install mariadb-server

Now we will need that package also to be able to build the server.

aptitude install libmariadbclient-dev

3 Installation

We can now get the sources :

hg

cd /usr/share hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/services/server-full firefox_sync cd firefox_sync

And launch the build :

make

> make build [...] 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]

Let's install the latest Python module and Guinicorn (WSGI HTTP Server) :

pip

./bin/pip install Mysql-Python ./bin/pip install gunicorn

We are going to create a dedicated user for this application and reset rights :

groupadd firefoxsync useradd -d /usr/share/firefox_sync -g firefoxsync -r -s /bin/bash firefoxsync chown -Rf firefoxsync. /usr/share/firefox_sync

4 Configuration

Alright, all the installation is now finished. Let's configure everything.

4.1 MariaDB

You need to create a database and user (fit with your informations) :

CREATE DATABASE firefox_syncdb; CREATE USER 'firefox_sync'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; GRANT ALL ON firefox_syncdb.* TO 'firefox_sync'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; FLUSH privileges;

4.2 Sync Server

Edit the configuration to set database informations :

etc/sync.conf

[captcha] use = true public_key = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx private_key = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx use_ssl = false   [storage] backend = syncstorage.storage.sql.SQLStorage sqluri = mysql://firefox_sync:password@localhost:3306/firefox_syncdbstandard_collections = false # Set quota and size use_quota = true quota_size = 5120 pool_size = 100 pool_recycle = 3600 reset_on_return = true display_config = true create_tables = true   [auth] backend = services.user.sql.SQLUser sqluri = mysql://firefox_sync:password@localhost:3306/firefox_syncdbpool_size = 100 pool_recycle = 3600 create_tables = true # Uncomment the next line to disable creation of new user accounts. #allow_new_users = false  [nodes] # You must set this to your client-visible server URL. fallback_node = http://firefoxsync.deimos.fr:5000/  [smtp] host = localhost port = 25 sender = firefoxsync@deimos.fr   [cef] use = true file = syslog vendor = mozilla version = 0 device_version = 1.3 product = weave

WARNING

It's preferable to use SSL connection. If you have autosigned certificates, open manually the URL with firefox to accept them and avoiding errors

If you're not going to use Nginx, check that your firewall port is open on 5000 port number :

iptables

iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 5000 -j ACCEPT

For more security and if you're going to use a web server like Nginx, it's better to listen only on localhost. In addition, you need to change the 'use' parameter from http to gunicorn. And to finish, you also need to change the log path :

development.ini

... [server:main] use = egg:gunicornhost = 0.0.0.0port = 5000 workers = 2 timeout = 60 ... [handler_syncserver_errors] class = handlers.RotatingFileHandler args = ('/var/log/firefoxsync/sync-error.log',)level = ERROR formatter = generic

Then let's create those folders :

mkdir -p /var/log/firefoxsync /var/run/firefoxsync chown firefoxsync. /var/log/firefoxsync /var/run/firefoxsync

You can now try to manually launch the server if you want and sync a user :

paster

su - firefoxsync -c '/usr/share/firefox_sync/bin/gunicorn_paster /usr/share/firefox_sync/development.ini &'

Then kill it once you've tested it as we're going to add an init script for it.

4.3 Nginx

Adapt the configuration to your needs :

/etc/nginx/sites-available/firefoxsync.deimos.fr

server { include listen_port.conf; listen 443 ssl;   ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key; ssl_session_timeout 5m;   # Force SSL if ($scheme = http) { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; }   server_name firefoxsync.deimos.fr;  access_log /var/log/nginx/firefoxsync.deimos.fr_access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/firefoxsync.deimos.fr_error.log;  location / { proxy_pass_header Server; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme; proxy_connect_timeout 10; proxy_read_timeout 10; proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/; }   # Drop config include drop.conf; }

Then enable it :

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/firefoxsync.deimos.fr /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ service nginx reload

4.4 Debian

As there is no init script to launch it automatically on boot, we're going to change that :

/etc/init.d/firefoxsync

#!/bin/bash   ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: paster # Required-Start: $all # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: starts the paster server # Description: starts paster ### END INIT INFO DESC="Mozilla Sync Server" PROJECT=/usr/share/firefox_sync VIRTUALENV=$PROJECT PID_DIR=/var/run/firefoxsync PID_FILE=$PID_DIR/firefoxsync.pid LOG_FILE=/var/log/firefoxsync/firefoxsync.log USER=firefoxsync GROUP=firefoxsync PROD_FILE=$PROJECT/development.ini RET_VAL=0   # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables . /lib/init/vars.sh   # Define LSB log_* functions. # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present # and status_of_proc is working. . /lib/lsb/init-functions   # Activate Python virtual environment source $VIRTUALENV/bin/activate   # Change directory to project cd $PROJECT   case "$1" in start) log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" mkdir -p /var/run/firefoxsync chown firefoxsync. /var/run/firefoxsync paster serve \ --daemon \ --pid-file=$PID_FILE \ --log-file=$LOG_FILE \ --user=$USER \ --group=$GROUP \ $PROD_FILE \ start ;; stop) log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" paster serve \ --daemon \ --pid-file=$PID_FILE \ --log-file=$LOG_FILE \ --user=$USER \ --group=$GROUP \ $PROD_FILE \ stop ;; restart|force-reload) log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" paster serve \ --daemon \ --pid-file=$PID_FILE \ --log-file=$LOG_FILE \ --user=$USER \ --group=$GROUP \ $PROD_FILE \ restart ;; status) paster serve \ --daemon \ --pid-file=$PID_FILE \ --log-file=$LOG_FILE \ --user=$USER \ --group=$GROUP \ status ;; *) echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" exit 3 esac exit $RET_VAL

Then update it on runlevels and start it :

cd /etc/init.d chmod 755 firefoxsync update-rc.d firefoxsync defaults /etc/init.d/firefoxsync start

4.5 Logrotate

You will see logs are verbose enough to install a logrotate script :

/etc/logrotate.d/firefoxsync

/var/log/firefoxsync/*.log { weekly missingok rotate 5 compress delaycompress notifempty create 644 firefoxsync firefoxsync sharedscripts postrotate chown firefoxsync. /var/log/firefoxsync/firefox-sync.log chmod 644 /var/log/firefoxsync/firefox-sync.log endscript }

5 Upgrade

To upgrade the sever, simply run those commands as root :

/etc/init.d/firefox_sync stop cd /usr/share/firefox_sync su - firefoxsync hg pull hg update make build exit /etc/init.d/firefox_sync start

6 Client

On the client side, there is one account to create and specify the url of the server. Then you could associate all your device to this account.