How does one migrate Chrome browser bookmarks between 32 bit and 64 bit
Pi systems?

I tried exporting bookmarks on the 32 bit system, booting the 64 bit
system and mounting the old root file systme, then importing the saved
bookmark file. That produced a permissions denied error

Next I copied the bookmarks file to the 64 bit system and discovered
the file was owned by root. Changing ownership to my username causes
the import command to claim the import was successful, but the saved
bookmarks aren't displayed.

I'm guessing this problem has something to do with permissions mismatch,
but it didn't get fixed by a simple chown command.
Thanks for reading, any guidance appreciated.

Am 14.01.2023 um 18:03:51 Uhr schrieb bob prohaska:

> How does one migrate Chrome browser bookmarks between 32 bit and 64
> bit Pi systems?

Can you export them as HTML?

Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
> Am 14.01.2023 um 18:03:51 Uhr schrieb bob prohaska:
>
>> How does one migrate Chrome browser bookmarks between 32 bit and 64
>> bit Pi systems?
>
> Can you export them as HTML?
>
That's what I did.

The problem doesn't seem to be with chrome, it's got something
to do with user permissions. The old system came with the default
pi user, plus a regular account which I used for the browser.

The new system has only the user account created when first booted.
Both user account names are the same, but presumably the user id
numbers are different. I thought matching names would be sufficient
to let me read the old files from the new host, but apparently not.

If I try to traverse the old filesystem from the new root system using
the file manager I see see some files and directories, but quite a
few are hidden. In one case I was able to open a graphic, and then
got a belated permission denied message that didn't actually do anything.

That suggests something wrong with permissions handling, but whether
on the new or old system is unclear.

Thanks for reading and replying!

bob prohaska

On Sat, 14 Jan 2023 19:55:06 -0000 (UTC), bob prohaska wrote:

> Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
>> Am 14.01.2023 um 18:03:51 Uhr schrieb bob prohaska:
>>
>>> How does one migrate Chrome browser bookmarks between 32 bit and 64
>>> bit Pi systems?
>>
>> Can you export them as HTML?
>>
> That's what I did.
>
> The problem doesn't seem to be with chrome, it's got something to do
> with user permissions. The old system came with the default pi user,
> plus a regular account which I used for the browser.
>
> The new system has only the user account created when first booted.
> Both user account names are the same, but presumably the user id numbers
> are different. I thought matching names would be sufficient to let me
> read the old files from the new host, but apparently not.
>
> If I try to traverse the old filesystem from the new root system using
> the file manager I see see some files and directories, but quite a few
> are hidden. In one case I was able to open a graphic, and then got a
> belated permission denied message that didn't actually do anything.
>
> That suggests something wrong with permissions handling, but whether on
> the new or old system is unclear.
>
Its easy to compare the numeric values associated with user and group
names: either look at the file(s) you're transferring worth 'ls -l' or as
root use 'less' to read /etc/passwd for both computers (uid and gid are
fields 3 and 4).

Once you know uid and gid for both systems, it should be possible to
modify the files you're importing to suit the system you're importing them
to - providing to can discover the file formats that chrome uses for
bookmarks. Don't ask me about that: I don't use the chrome browser,only
firefox, brave and lynx, which do everything I need.

--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

bob prohaska wrote on 1/14/23 7:03 PM:
> How does one migrate Chrome browser bookmarks between 32 bit and 64 bit
> Pi systems?
why do you not sync it with google ?

Am 14.01.2023 um 19:55:06 Uhr schrieb bob prohaska:

> The problem doesn't seem to be with chrome, it's got something
> to do with user permissions. The old system came with the default
> pi user, plus a regular account which I used for the browser.
>
> The new system has only the user account created when first booted.
> Both user account names are the same, but presumably the user id
> numbers are different. I thought matching names would be sufficient
> to let me read the old files from the new host, but apparently not.

You can run sudo chown new-user file.

Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
> Its easy to compare the numeric values associated with user and group
> names: either look at the file(s) you're transferring worth 'ls -l' or as
> root use 'less' to read /etc/passwd for both computers (uid and gid are
> fields 3 and 4).
>

At least part of the trouble is that I didn't recognize the bookmarks
display after importing. The old system displayed them individually below
the URL bar. The new system displays the imported bookmarks as a folder,
below the URL bar and I didn't notice 8-(

> Once you know uid and gid for both systems, it should be possible to
> modify the files you're importing to suit the system you're importing them

It looks as if sudo works very differently between new and old systems.
I'm no longer prompted for a password when I use sudo, and when I used
sudo to copy the bookmarks file from the old filesystem to the new one
the file owner changed (without comment) to root. It appears that change
was the cause of my difficulties.

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
> It looks as if sudo works very differently between new and old systems.
> I'm no longer prompted for a password when I use sudo, and when I used
> sudo to copy the bookmarks file from the old filesystem to the new one
> the file owner changed (without comment) to root. It appears that change
> was the cause of my difficulties.

Two things: PiOS never required typing a password for root. If your old
system did, you changed it manually (with visudo). And copying with sudo
always chowns to root.

Ralph Spitzner wrote:

> why do you not sync it with google ?

what a stupid question, sorry

A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
> bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
>> It looks as if sudo works very differently between new and old systems.
>> I'm no longer prompted for a password when I use sudo, and when I used
>> sudo to copy the bookmarks file from the old filesystem to the new one
>> the file owner changed (without comment) to root. It appears that change
>> was the cause of my difficulties.
>
> Two things: PiOS never required typing a password for root. If your old
> system did, you changed it manually (with visudo). And copying with sudo
> always chowns to root.

Thanks for the clarification!

bob prohaska

On 15/01/2023 16:36, A. Dumas wrote:
> bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
>> It looks as if sudo works very differently between new and old systems.
>> I'm no longer prompted for a password when I use sudo, and when I used
>> sudo to copy the bookmarks file from the old filesystem to the new one
>> the file owner changed (without comment) to root. It appears that change
>> was the cause of my difficulties.
>
> Two things: PiOS never required typing a password for root. If your old
> system did, you changed it manually (with visudo). And copying with sudo
> always chowns to root.

sudo cp -p does not chown to root:

see man cp
-p same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps

very useful it is, too.

Deloptes wrote on 1/16/23 10:46 AM:
> Ralph Spitzner wrote:
>
>> why do you not sync it with google ?
>
> what a stupid question, sorry
>

what exactly is stupid with syncing from the 32bit system to google and
then syncing the 64bit system from google ?
it's bookmarks this thread is about, so why go mess with permissions et
al just to move over bookmarks from one chrome to the other ?
or was he talking about some de-googled version of _chromium_ ?