copy profiles and workspaces to an external drive

andi11

Hallo, this is my first time here at the forum.
I use Vivaldi on desktop with Linux Mint for more than 3 years and I like the extensive use of profiles and workspaces. At the meantime I have 14 profiles.

Now reading through the Forum → Vivaldi for Linux and searching for 'profiles' I get the feeling by the first time, that my Vivaldi-installation is "poor". I don't have any /home/user/directory nor file, except /home/andi/Downloads/vivaldi-stable_4.3.2439.44-1_amd64.deb. That means, I do not have any config-file.

Profiles I can create and delete. But how can I copy both profiles and workspaces to an external drive?
The aim of all this: I want to be able to read all URLs without using the Internet and finally make a list of them..

Who knows what to do and how?
Andi11

mib2berlin

@andi11
Hi, the config files and directories are hidden in most Linux distributions.
In the most file manager you can display hidden files with Ctrl+H or in the settings/context menu.
In this case it is .config/vivaldi.

andi11

@mib2berlin
Hello and thanks for the tip, in my case I'm sure you mean /home/andi/.config/vivaldi.
Yes, indeed, there is such a directory! This way I learned that the 'mate-search-tool' - even as root - does not show the hidden directories.
Also, all 14 profiles are there, although not in the number sequence 1 ... 14, but that's just a side note.
Thank you for your help

mib2berlin

@andi11
The numbers are often muddled, open chrome://profile-internals
there you can see which folder is used by name.

Cheers, mib

andi11

Hello,
I don't want to throw in the towel just yet, but I feel more than overwhelmed with this task.
I have “looked through” profile 1, but could not find a “useful” file from which I could read URLs.
Thanks for the tip, I'm sure you'll smile: I first opened chrome://profile-internals in Google Chrome before I realized my mistake.
Well, now I have the names of all the profiles and the assigned numbers. But what now? What have I gained? I have no idea how to get to my explained problem.
Greetings Andi

mib2berlin

@andi11
The aim of all this: I want to be able to read all URLs without using the Internet and finally make a list of them.

No idea how this should work, the workspaces are on different places in a profile.
Maybe you can use Bookmark all Tabs but you have to do this for all workspaces in every single profile.
If you familiar with JSON files you can edit the file sessions.json in Profilename/Sessions/

EDIT: In the file are only the workspace names, not helpful for your problem.

mib2berlin

@andi11
I checked a few other files but I have no idea how one can extract URL's from the binary files of Vivaldi or other Chromium browsers.
In a file Tabs_13372969069781577 for example they are there
but what to do with something like:

{"workspaceId":1715161874249,"ext_id":"a9853299-6419-49ee-926f-e2431ed2a9b9","interval":0,"urlForThumbnail":
"https://www.tagesspiegel.de/",
"thumbnail":"chrome://vivaldi-data/thumbnail/5MZBP2LVL47CIH643ADIJUBBELENI7YV.jpg"}

Pathduck

@mib2berlin Grepping through session files to extract urls is a futile and hopeless endavour. They are simply not meant to be parsed by humans.

I guess one can do something like:

$ strings Tabs_13372973763759168 | egrep "^http" | sort | uniq
http://yahoo.com/
https://consent.yahoo.com/
https://consent.yahoo.com/v2/collectConsent?sessionId=3_cc-session_57d4c17e-a525-4820-9d42-10dd820920cd
https://social.vivaldi.net
https://social.vivaldi.net/explore
https://vivaldi.com/bk/sd-accuweather
https://vivaldi.com/bk/sd-community-nb
https://vivaldi.com/bk/sd-social
https://vivaldi.com/bk/vivaldia-game
https://vivaldi.com/game/
https://vivaldi.net
https://vivaldi.net/#pk_campaign=sd&pk_kwd=community-nb
https://www.accuweather.com
https://www.accuweather.com/?partner=web_tempest_vivaldi_adc>
https://www.awxcdn.com
https://www.vg.no
https://www.vg.no/
https://www.yahoo.com/?guccounter=1

... If one is crazy and desperate enough

Just use the Windows panel, select the tabs and use the context menu, or simply use Ctrl+C.

BoozeOperator

Good morning

@Pathduck said in copy profiles and workspaces to an external drive:

I guess one can do something like:
$ strings Tabs_13372973763759168 | egrep "^http" | sort | uniq
... If one is crazy and desperate enough

I may be off-topic with this question or not: What do you consider crazy and desperate with this approach? Looks perfectly useable to me.

mib2berlin

@BoozeOperator
Hi, I guess @Pathduck meant you get crazy if you have to do this for 14 profiles and possibly thousands of tabs.
@Pathduck
Yes, grep is very powerful maybe @andi11 can use or test this.

Cheers, mib

BoozeOperator

Edit for Kraut2English

@mib2berlin said in copy profiles and workspaces to an external drive:

@BoozeOperator
Hi, I guess @Pathduck meant you get crazy if you have to do this for 14 profiles and possibly thousands of tabs.

Depends on what your objective is. The procedure is as simple as can be. If the perspective of potential success gives you the shivers, then the need for changes in the specification becomes evident.

Pathduck

@BoozeOperator said in copy profiles and workspaces to an external drive:

What do you consider crazy and desperate with this approach? Looks perfectly useable to me.

These are binary files, they were never meant to be parsed with tools like strings - they are only meant to be parsed by Chromium's session management code.

Very few people understand how these files work in detail.
https://digitalinvestigation.wordpress.com/tag/snss/

There's no guarantee that strings will even return all the relevant URLs the user is interested in.

Someone desperate to restore their lost tabs after a crash might get some use of it. But those people who hoard tabs and care deeply about them should start automatically saving sessions on a regular basis.

Aaron

@andi11 said in copy profiles and workspaces to an external drive:

how can I copy both profiles and workspaces to an external drive?

A. Find out the configuration file directory currently used by Vivaldi;
B. copy/move configuration file directory to external storage device;
C. Create a custom desktop entry that allows Vivaldi to be launched each time with a command line parameter specifying the location of the custom configuration file directory.

andi11

@mib2berlin
Hello mib2berlin,
thank you very much for your assistance, but as I said earlier, I have put on a shoe that is more than too big for me.
Bookmark and JSON files – I have never heard of it

When I take only 'Profile 1': It shows me
1.640 Objects all together 103,5 MB (97,3 MB on drive)[isn't normaly the file size smaller than the drive size? ] - so I'm looking for a needle in a haystack...

Pathduck writes: $ strings Tabs_13372973763759168 | egrep "^http" | sort | uniq

OK, this option I could try, but not without knowing the name of the file, my free time is far too short.

bye andi11

andi11

@Pathduck
Hello Pathduck,
the idea with strings I could try, but not without knowing the name of the files, my free time is far too short.
When I take only 'Profile 1': It shows me 1.640 Objects ..

In anyway thanks

bye andi11

Pathduck

@andi11 Forget about it, you need to learn basic Linux skills first, and it will probably not do what you want anyway. I'm kind of surprised you're even on Linux not knowing the basics of how to find files and examine them in the shell.

Why not do as I already suggested, use the Windows panel, select tabs and copy the urls?
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/window-panel/

I don't even understand the origin of why you want to do this?

You wrote:
"The aim of all this: I want to be able to read all URLs without using the Internet and finally make a list of them.."
This sentence makes zero sense to me.

andi11

@Aaron
Hello Aaron,
To (A): please, could you give me a helping hand, to find out the directory of the configuration file.
I have made a backup of my /home/user/.config/vivaldi directory to an external drive.
On the root drive I find parts of the browser (search for 'vivaldi') in /etc/..., /opt/..., /usr/..., /var/...
To (C): What do you mean by 'create'? I'm not a developer, so far I haven't written a single program yet.
bye andi11

Aaron

@andi11 said in copy profiles and workspaces to an external drive:

To (A): please, could you give me a helping hand, to find out the directory of the configuration file.

click "Vivaldi menu"->Help->about:
About Version - Vivaldi_001.png

The last line shows you all about it.

BTW,to find out the hidden files/dirs using 'mate-search-tool' you may type:

'mate-search-tool  --hidden  <filename/dir-name>'

(Ref. here )
Or, simply using command 'ls'

ls -al xxxxxxx

andi11

@Aaron
Hello Aaron,
Thank you very much for your help, I have learnt more in the last three days than I usually do in two months.
I will get back to you a.s.a.p.
bye Andi

Aaron

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