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Push out Firefox bookmarks to multiple users

 
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# 1  
Old 09-17-2008
Push out Firefox bookmarks to multiple users
Ok, so I want to push out Firefox bookmarks to all the student accounts on my Mac server, but we all know how fun-loving Firefox profiles are, with their random czg6hi72.default profile names.

My question is how would I send the bookmarks.html file out to /Students/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/czg6hi72.default when the czg6hi72.default is going to be different for every account. Since that is the only folder in the Profiles folder, is there a way to say go into whichever folder is in the Profiles folder?

Please let me know if this doesn't make any sense.. even I'm getting confused!!
Thanks!
# 2  
Old 09-18-2008
Hmmm, tricky one.... I went into my ~/.mozilla/firefox and did "ls -la" :
Quote:
drwx------ 7 sysgate users 4096 2008-09-18 17:53 cbx50a5a.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 sysgate users 94 2008-07-23 15:41 profiles.ini
- the bookmarks.html is in cbx50a5a.default folder, as well as some other files.
So, it looks like you cannot predict the numbers that are before the .default, and you can't do "cd *.default", obviously, so my workaround suggestion would be to get the file you want to be distributed, and post it on HTTP server, somewhere, where everyone can access it, mail all the students, saying : please download this file, and update your bookmarks accordingly".
I would love, however, to see programmatic way to solve this.
# 3  
Old 09-18-2008
or you can go the easy way and install an extension to do so.

or you can force them to use your own home page, wich has the links

depends on how much "power" over those usres and pc you have
and how much they awnt the bookmarks
# 4  
Old 09-18-2008
It's not much problem to write a small shell script to do this. You allready know where to put the file, part from the random default userid string. I'm assuming that you have full privileges over the home directories so you could do something like:

Code:
find /Students/*/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ -name "bookmarks.html" > /tmp/firefox_bookmark_loc.out
cat /tmp/firefox_bookmark_loc.out | while read line
do
mv /my/new/bookmars.html $line
done

Something like this should do the trick - but ofcourse it overwrites what is previously set in the bookmarks, but according to your post I assume thats allrigt?
# 5  
Old 09-19-2008
Why not export your bookmarks and ask them to import?

Actually, I am surprised that you say the bookmark location is a random directory. Whereever I have talked to people about this topic, it is :
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/8j7l8qg8.default/bookmarks.html

If you google that code, you will find many entries. Of course, I am most likely wrong.
# 6  
Old 09-19-2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by yodomino6
Ok, so I want to push out Firefox bookmarks to all the student accounts on my Mac server, but we all know how fun-loving Firefox profiles are, with their random czg6hi72.default profile names.

My question is how would I send the bookmarks.html file out to /Students/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/czg6hi72.default when the czg6hi72.default is going to be different for every account. Since that is the only folder in the Profiles folder, is there a way to say go into whichever folder is in the Profiles folder?

Please let me know if this doesn't make any sense.. even I'm getting confused!!
Thanks!
profile.ini holds the path

Code:
#! /bin/ksh
#
# /Students/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/czg6hi72.default

# path to bookmarks.html
#
bookmark=bkmk.html

for student in $(<list_of_students.txt)
do
  cd "/Students/${student}/Library/Application Support/FireFox"

  # Check for the default path in profile.ini
  # This should handle the IsRelative param as well
  #
  path=$(grep -Ei "^path" profile.ini)
  cd ${path}

  #backup the previous bookmarks
  #
  /bin/mv bookmarks.html bookmarks.html.$(date +%Y%m%d)
 
  # Deploy the new one
  #
  /bin/cp ${bookmark} .
done

Adapt this to suit your needs.
Last edited by vino; 09-19-2008 at 02:08 AM..
 
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