Streaming the Fox

Replicating Firefox history with Litestream

The following steps walk through how to replicate the Firefox browser history using Litestream, a streaming replication tool for SQLite databases.

1. Follow the Litestream / Getting Started / Prerequisites steps (“Install Litestream & SQLite” and “Setting up MinIO”)

2. Copy the Firefox SQLite database to your dekstop:

❯ cp $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/*release*/places.db $HOME/places.db

3. Replicate the database to object storage (MinIO) with Litestream:

❯ export LITESTREAM_ACCESS_KEY_ID=minioadmin
❯ export LITESTREAM_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=minioadmin
❯ litestream replicate places.sqlite s3://mybkt.localhost:9000/places.db
2025/04/08 21:11:53 INFO litestream version=v0.3.13
2025/04/08 21:11:53 INFO initialized db path=/Users/joe/Desktop/places.sqlite
2025/04/08 21:11:53 INFO replicating to name=s3 type=s3 sync-interval=1s bucket=mybkt path=places.db region=us-east-1 endpoint=http://localhost:9000

4. Restore a copy of the database from object storage with Litestream:

❯ export LITESTREAM_ACCESS_KEY_ID=minioadmin
❯ export LITESTREAM_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=minioadmin
❯ litestream restore -o places_copy.db s3://mybkt.localhost:9000/places.db
2025/04/08 20:56:17 INFO restoring snapshot replica=s3 generation=bbe87a28733f79e7 index=0 path=places_copy.db.tmp
2025/04/08 20:56:17 INFO restoring wal files replica=s3 generation=bbe87a28733f79e7 index_min=0 index_max=0
2025/04/08 20:56:17 INFO downloaded wal replica=s3 generation=bbe87a28733f79e7 index=0 elapsed=3.611136ms
2025/04/08 20:56:17 INFO applied wal replica=s3 generation=bbe87a28733f79e7 index=0 elapsed=5.923536ms
2025/04/08 20:56:17 INFO renaming database from temporary location replica=s3

5. List the tables in the copied database:

❯ sqlite3 places_copy.db
SQLite version 3.43.2 2023-10-10 13:08:14
Enter ".help" for usage hints.

sqlite❯ .tables
_litestream_lock                    moz_items_annos
_litestream_seq                     moz_keywords
moz_anno_attributes                 moz_meta
moz_annos                           moz_origins
moz_bookmarks                       moz_places
moz_bookmarks_deleted               moz_places_extra
moz_historyvisits                   moz_places_metadata
moz_historyvisits_extra             moz_places_metadata_search_queries
moz_inputhistory                    moz_previews_tombstones

MinIO console showing the replicated SQLite database

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