![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tech overflow
I guess, in retrospect, it makes sense that I had three active computers on my desk today.
At work we are in the end stages of an acquisition. In this last step, they move us off of the old employer's domain. That means email migration and new login credentials for our PCs. The latter is being implemented as: create new account, copy files from one profile to another, leave the end user to clean up the resulting mess. They're doing this in waves, so I already know from people in earlier waves that there will be mess and I'm going to lose at least a day to this, maybe two. (For reasons unknown, they are uninstalling and reinstalling Office, even though it's the same version, so I recently spent an hour or so taking screenshots of all the various settings pages so I don't have to figure it all out again. No, I found no "export client configuration" option, and I do override a lot of defaults in pursuit of accessibility.)
So, one of the things a coworker warned about is that browser state did not survive the transfer. Since it's a company machine that requires multiple logins before you could even make use of the information, I allow Firefox to store most of the various credentials I need for work sites. Yes I keep notes about passwords (reminder hints, not actual passwords) and user names, but it'd still be a pain. Plus there are all the tabs I keep open all the time; I want to preserve that session state. And bookmarks are important, though probably the easiest part of this to protect.
All this pointed to Firefox sync. That sounds like a backup, right? Sync your history, session state, etc to another device -- perfect. I created a Firefox account using my work email address. (Gotta prevent collisions with my other account and machines, after all.) Well, it turns out Firefox doesn't view it as a backup; you can't do anything until you connect two devices. Hmm, I thought -- I don't want to entangle any of my personal devices. But wait! I have a seldom-used company tablet++ (the packaging calls it a computer; it's basically a small tablet with a detachable keyboard running Windows 10). Perfect.
This afternoon I pulled it out to set up the other end of the sync. After I logged in, Firefox said "click on the confirmation link we just emailed you".
Oh. Great. So I pulled out the work laptop, waited for it to slowly boot, waited for Outlook to slowly start up (I wonder if I can access the web version from a personal machine? gotta check that), eventually found the email in the spam trap, was reminded how much I hate trackpads, and finally completed the circuit with Firefox. But that didn't sync either; that enabled sync. So I had tell Firefox on the work machine to start sending data.
The tablet got bookmarks and probably credentials (I'll need to install a VPN client on it to confirm, which I'll do at work), but it didn't get tabs. Was it supposed to? I used Google on the machine I'm typing this on, the one with a real keyboard and mouse, to find out. Apparently there's a setting. Ok.
Chrome will be easier; I don't store as much state there. I'll just need a few tabs, and if I have to do that the old-fashioned way (emailing links to myself), so be it.
All of this is contingency planning, but it sure would suck to lose that data.
no subject
no subject