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Issue: We have a number of bookmarks that we need to publish to our users computers that are bound to active directory. We can easily accomplish this with group policy for Internet Explorer. At the present time, I am not able to locate a way in which to publish these same set of bookmarks to our staff user's computers for FireFox. Each computer in our organization has FireFox installed on it and we need to keep the core set of bookmarks the same for both browsers. I was curious if there was a way to send these out to FireFox through group policy in case we needed to edit them again in the future.

UPDATE: We have many versions of FireFox that are greater than v3.6. We also are wanting to append these bookmarks to all users even for users with existing profiles.

John
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    Which version of FF? – squillman Sep 15 '11 at 21:12
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    @squillman These days, it probably changes weekly. – Shane Madden Sep 15 '11 at 21:14
  • At the present, it does not matter to me. We have many different versions installed on our computers. – John Sep 15 '11 at 21:15
  • Are you ok with completely over-writing all of their bookmarks? Or do you want to simply append/replace/delete some? – Zoredache Sep 15 '11 at 21:16
  • @Shane Yes. I was thinking, though, that they'd switched bookmarks over into a sqlite db but that doesn't seem to be the case. – squillman Sep 15 '11 at 21:18
  • I would like to append to existing user's bookmarks. – John Sep 15 '11 at 21:19
  • @squillman, the primary storage for bookmarks is a sqlite database since Firefox3. Backups are made in other formats as well. – Zoredache Sep 15 '11 at 21:20
  • @John, you probably should update your question and mention that requirement. You mention you have many versions of firefox. Can you tell us what the minimum version is? Everything is newer then 3.6 right? – Zoredache Sep 15 '11 at 21:22
  • @Zoredache That's what I thought. Was looking at the wrong file.... – squillman Sep 15 '11 at 21:26
  • @squillman, bookmarks, history, and a few other things are all now in `places.sqlite`. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.sqlite – Zoredache Sep 15 '11 at 21:27
  • Fiddling with the places.sqlite database, even if you could find each profile on a computer, is probably not a good idea. What about setting the home page to a page that is a list of the bookmarks you want? – William Jackson Sep 16 '11 at 03:14

1 Answers1

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The simple way to do this is to create a batch script that copies the bookmarks from a network share to the user's profile. The assign the script to run at login time using GPO.

EDIT: Sorry for the previous answer. Apparently Firefox bookmarks have been in a sqlite database since v3.

You have work to do. According to this page you can use sqlite to query the places.sqlite database and retrieve records. The Mozilla developer page is here. The sqlite executables are available for download here:

And you can use the SQLite manager Add-on for firefox to learn the database layout so you can script the adds.

uSlackr
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    It sure seems like a simple copy is almost certainly a bad idea. Since it will over-write the users bookmarks and history. You will also have to deal with the fact that the Firefox Profiles, by default, use a randomly generated directory per profile. – Zoredache Sep 15 '11 at 21:18
  • Can this be done without destroying the user's existing bookmarks? What about machines that have more than one use, how do you update all of the local user's FireFox profiles with the new bookmarks - again without destroying their existing bookmarks? – John Sep 15 '11 at 21:18
  • @John Firefox >3.5 uses sqlite DBs for just about everything these days, so it should be possible to modify the bookmarks programmatically. – Andrew Sep 16 '11 at 06:40
  • I believe this answer should be accepted unless you are looking to have someone write the script for you. – sinping Oct 05 '11 at 15:05
  • The questions remain - Is there an alternate way to do this? Perhaps, an easier way to do this? – John Oct 05 '11 at 15:53
  • Judging by the responses and the research I did for my answer, I'd say no. – uSlackr Oct 05 '11 at 16:51