Set up Your Own Firefox Sync Server with Weave Minimal

Productivity Sauce

Using the Sync feature in Firefox, you can keep browser data in sync between different devices and platforms. By default, Firefox syncs data using the service maintained by Mozilla, but it's easy to set up your own synchronization server courtesy of the Weave Minimal software. First of all, make sure that the Python setuptools package is installed on your system. On Debian and Ubuntu-based distibutions, the package can be installed by running the apt-get install python-setuptools command as root. Once you've done that, run the easy_install -U weave-minimal as root to install the Weave Minimal server. You can then run the server using the weave-minimal --enable-registration command.

Next step is to reconfigure Firefox for use with the new server. Choose Edit | Preferences | Sync, note your email address and sync key (you'll need them in case you want to switch back to Mozilla's sync server), and click the Unlink This Device link to unlink the Firefox instance. Create then a new sync account and specify the required info along with the URL of the new sync server (don't forget the trailing slash). Hit the Next button, and you are done.