Run-Your-Own Firefox Sync Server

Note that this repository is no longer being maintained.

The Firefox Sync Server has been rewritten in Rust, and the new project can be found here:

https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs

Use this at your own risk, and with the understanding that it is not being maintained, work is being done on its replacement, and that no support or assistance will be offered.

This is an all-in-one package for running a self-hosted Firefox Sync server. It bundles the "tokenserver" project for authentication and the "syncstorage" project for storage, to produce a single stand-alone webapp.

Complete installation instructions are available at:

https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html

Quickstart

The Sync Server software runs using python 2.7, and the build process requires make and virtualenv. You will need to have the following packages (or similar, depending on your operating system) installed:

• python2.7
• python2.7-dev
• python-virtualenv
• gcc and g++
• make
• libstdc++
• libffi-dev
• mysql-dev
• musl-dev
• ncurses-dev
• openssl-dev

Take a checkout of this repository, then run "make build" to pull in the necessary python package dependencies:

$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver
$ cd syncserver
$ make build

To sanity-check that things got installed correctly, do the following:

$ make test

Now you can run the server:

$ make serve

This should start a server on http://localhost:5000/.

Now go into Firefox's about:config page, search for a setting named "tokenServerURI", and change it to point to your server:

identity.sync.tokenserver.uri:  http://localhost:5000/token/1.0/sync/1.5

(Prior to Firefox 42, the TokenServer preference name for Firefox Desktop was "services.sync.tokenServerURI". While the old preference name will work in Firefox 42 and later, the new preference is recommended as the old preference name will be reset when the user signs out from Sync causing potential confusion.)

Firefox should now sync against your local server rather than the default Mozilla-hosted servers.

For more details on setting up a stable deployment, see:

https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html

Customization

All customization of the server can be done by editing the file "syncserver.ini", which contains lots of comments to help you on your way. Things you might like to change include:

• The client-visible hostname for your server. Edit the "public_url" key under the [syncerver] section.
• The database in which to store sync data. Edit the "sqluri" setting under the [syncserver] section.
• The secret key to use for signing auth tokens. Find the "secret" entry under the [syncserver] section and follow the instructions in the comment to replace it with a strong random key.

Database Backend Modules

If your python installation doesn't provide the "sqlite" module by default, you may need to install it as a separate package:

$ ./local/bin/pip install pysqlite2

Similarly, if you want to use a different database backend you will need to install an appropriate python module, e.g:

$ ./local/bin/pip install PyMySQL
$ ./local/bin/pip install psycopg2

Runner under Docker

Dockerhub Page

There is experimental support for running the server inside a Docker container. The docker image runs with UID/GID 1001/1001. Build the image like this:

$ docker build -t syncserver:latest .

Then you can run the server by passing in configuration options as environment variables, like this:

$ docker run --rm \
    -p 5000:5000 \
    -e SYNCSERVER_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost:5000 \
    -e SYNCSERVER_SECRET=<PUT YOUR SECRET KEY HERE> \
    -e SYNCSERVER_SQLURI=sqlite:////tmp/syncserver.db \
    -e SYNCSERVER_BATCH_UPLOAD_ENABLED=true \
    -e SYNCSERVER_FORCE_WSGI_ENVIRON=false \
    -e SYNCSERVER_DEBUG_ENABLED=true \
    -e PORT=5000 \
    mozilla/syncserver:latest

or

$ docker run --rm \
    -p 5000:5000 \
    -e SYNCSERVER_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost:5000 \
    -e SYNCSERVER_SECRET_FILE=<PUT YOUR SECRET KEY FILE LOCATION HERE> \
    -e SYNCSERVER_SQLURI=sqlite:////tmp/syncserver.db \
    -e SYNCSERVER_BATCH_UPLOAD_ENABLED=true \
    -e SYNCSERVER_FORCE_WSGI_ENVIRON=false \
    -e PORT=5000 \
    -v /secret/file/at/host:<PUT YOUR SECRET KEY FILE LOCATION HERE>  \
    mozilla/syncserver:latest

Don't forget to generate a random secret key to use in the SYNCSERVER_SECRET environment variable or mount your secret key file!

And you can test whether it's running correctly by using the builtin function test suite, like so:

$ /usr/local/bin/python -m syncstorage.tests.functional.test_storage \
    --use-token-server http://localhost:5000/token/1.0/sync/1.5

If you'd like a persistent setup, you can mount a volume as well:

$ docker run -d \
    -v /syncserver:/data \
    -p 5000:5000 \
    -e SYNCSERVER_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost:5000 \
    -e SYNCSERVER_SECRET=<PUT YOUR SECRET KEY HERE> \
    -e SYNCSERVER_SQLURI=sqlite:////data/syncserver.db \
    -e SYNCSERVER_BATCH_UPLOAD_ENABLED=true \
    -e SYNCSERVER_FORCE_WSGI_ENVIRON=false \
    -e PORT=5000 \
    mozilla/syncserver:latest

Make sure that /syncserver is owned by 1001:1001

Docker Compose can also be used for structured deployments:

version: '3.7'
services:
    syncserver:
        container_name: syncserver
        image: mozilla/syncserver:latest
        volumes:
            - /syncserver:/data
        ports:
            - 5000:5000
        environment:
            SYNCSERVER_PUBLIC_URL: 'http://localhost:5000'
            SYNCSERVER_SECRET: '<PUT YOUR SECRET KEY HERE>'
            SYNCSERVER_SQLURI: 'sqlite:////data/syncserver.db'
            SYNCSERVER_BATCH_UPLOAD_ENABLED: 'true'
            SYNCSERVER_FORCE_WSGI_ENVIRON: 'false'
            PORT: '5000'
        restart: always

Removing Mozilla-hosted data

If you have previously uploaded Firefox Sync data to the Mozilla-hosted storage service and would like to remove it, you can use the following script to do so:

$ pip install PyFxA
$ python ./bin/delete_user_data.py user@example.com

Questions, Feedback

• Matrix: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Getting_Started
• Mailing list: https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/services-dev