[Support] - FEBE (et al.) alternate support thread

[Shadoefax]

This thread is for FEBE (or other of Chuck Baker's extensions) users that cannot register in my regular forum.

FEBE v8.9.3 incompatibility issue with Fx v49: See this post.

[avada]

Well, the regular forum is off-line.

[Shadoefax]

Works for me: http://www.customsoftwareconsult.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5.

Or you can follow the links from the homepage (http://softwarebychuck.com/).

[avada]

It times out here. The browsers can't connect at all. I'm in Europe though not in North-America.

Any way I'm just curios if a more efficient compression format such as 7-zip was considered for backups.

[Shadoefax]

Very old versions of FEBE (prior to v6.0) used 7-zip for archiving. Now FEBE uses the Mozilla XPCOM nsIZipWriter and nsIZipReader routines. I do not know if those routines are based on 7-zip or some other archive protocol.

[avada]

Very old versions of FEBE (prior to v6.0) used 7-zip for archiving. Now FEBE uses the Mozilla XPCOM nsIZipWriter and nsIZipReader routines. I do not know if those routines are based on 7-zip or some other archive protocol.

Any reason it was abandoned?
Apparently it's a plain old zip archive.

[Shadoefax]

I'm not sure what you mean by "abandoned". Before the creation of nsIZipWriter/nsIZipReader, Mozilla had no native way for developers to archive files. I had to include 7-zip external executables as part of the FEBE extension and use batch files to execute them.

[avada]

I'm not sure what you mean by "abandoned". Before the creation of nsIZipWriter/nsIZipReader, Mozilla had no native way for developers to archive files. I had to include 7-zip external executables as part of the FEBE extension and use batch files to execute them.

Okay, but was anything wrong with this approach? 7-zip is a superior format to zip.

[Shadoefax]

Yes, there were lots of issues using 7-zip.

For each item (bookmarks, extensions, themes, etc.) FEBE had to build and run an individual batch file. I you had, say 100 items to backup, FEBE would create and run 100 different batch files. Each opened up in its own window and cluttered the GUI. It was slow, cumbersome and error-prone. Each OS (Windows, *nix) had different syntax for the commands in the batch files. Communicating between the batch files and FEBE (i.e., checking for errors) was problematic.

Mozilla's XPCOM archive routines could be run asynchronously greatly speeding up the process. JavaScript could call the routines directly without using batch files and error checking was relatively easy.

[avada]

I see.

For each item (bookmarks, extensions, themes, etc.) FEBE had to build and run an individual batch file. I you had, say 100 items to backup, FEBE would create and run 100 different batch files.

This sounds weird. When I used the 7-zip command line as a scheduled task for backing up I could just specify the folder/files to archive.
My problem was that files in use were skipped. And since FF is open most of the time places.sqlite which is on of the main things to back up and other files were skipped.

So, anyway the website is still unreachable from here.

[Shadoefax]

When I used the 7-zip command line as a scheduled task for backing up I could just specify the folder/files to archive.

Yes. And that would create a single archive containing all the files in the folder specified. That is the same thing that FEBE does when performing a Full Profile backup. When performing a Selective backup, many archives are created - one for each backup item (bookmarks, passwords, a single extension, etc.).

FEBE doesn't usually run into locked file issues since it is running under the same PID as Firefox.

So, anyway the website is still unreachable from here.

I had one other user (from Iraq or Iran) that also could not load my websites. I never did find out the reason why. In fact, that is the reason I created this thread (although he never did post here).

[avada]

I had one other user (from Iraq or Iran) that also could not load my websites. I never did find out the reason why. In fact, that is the reason I created this thread (although he never did post here).

Well, I'm in Hungary. (EU, Central Europe). The middle east might be more problematic in my opinion.

[avada]

There's this annoying persistent issue where FEBE takes more than half a minute to open it's options window. It's even worse if I open it from about:addons because it hangs the GUI that way...

PS:
The official website still doesn't load.

[avada]

Why can't FEBE create the backup folder to save backups into? It seems like silly limitation. It's quite a nuisance, making sure that the folder exists.

PS: the official forum is still inaccessible.

[LoudNoise]

PS: the official forum is still inaccessible.

Works for me.