Add ability to set custom identity.sync.tokenserver.uri for self-hosted Sync

[SimonBasca]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 11316.165.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.122 Safari/537.36

Related issue: #3150

Steps to reproduce:

There is currently no way to specify a custom URL for a Firefox Sync Server (token url) while using the publicly available, Mozilla-hosted Firefox Accounts service.

Actual results:

There is no option to do this.

Expected results:

There should be an option like on Android to specify to custom token URL for self-hosted sync server. This option is available on desktop Firefox and on Firefox for Android.

[SimonBasca]

Jerry Heiselman:
I have attempted to create a fxa-client-configuration file located at https://thor.heiselman.com/.well-known/fxa-client-configuration that mirrors the one served by accounts.firefox.com with the one change being the URL for the sync tokenserver url to point to my own.

When configuring this URL in Firefox on iOS using the method of revealing the hidden Advance Account Settings menu by tapping repeatedly on the Version string in the Settings. I filled in the base URL for my server (https://thor.heiselman.com) and enable the "Use Custom Account Service" option. Once I enable the option, I can see the client request the fxa-client-configuration file from my server successfully, however, it then attempts to load the login page on my server despite the configuration pointing all other services back to the public Firefox service.

m.m.naseri@gmail.com:
Can we bump the priority of this bug from a P3? Many people seem to be holding off moving to the FF ecosystem simply because they can’t carry their privately stored data without the additional cost of setting up an account server.

This clearly breaks the user experience and I’d have imagined that after a couple years of back and forth on Github this would’ve received more attention.

[mmnaseri]

Also mentioned in #3150 (which was closed in favor of the bug in the bugzilla system).

[jheiselman]

I was the submitter of the Bugzilla report. I am still willing to work with someone here to help resolve this.

[jellium]

This option (choose what Firefox Sync server to use) should definitely be available on iOS (as it appears to be available on Android). Looking forward to being able to set it up.

[mwegner]

I recently made the switch to Firefox as my default browser (I think a lot of developer types have it installed, but drift back to their old setups for various comfort/muscle memory reasons). I would absolutely love to have the iOS version support a custom sync server.

There are quite a few "homelab" types that run significant infrastructure at home (i.e. VM hosts), and running something like a custom sync server doesn't add any extra overhead to their tech setup. I would absolutely run it, but it doesn't make any sense unless all of my Firefox devices can also use it.

[garvankeeley]

When implemented, ensure URLs are https or localhost. This is a sec requirement from app services.

[jheiselman]

@garvankeeley if you look at my comment (copied from the original bug), all URLs are HTTPS with valid LE certs.

[garvankeeley]

On desktop this is set in about:config using identity.fxaccounts.autoconfig.uri
Docs: https://moz-services-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-fxa.html

[jheiselman]

@garvankeeley this issue is specifically for Firefox on iOS which has no about:config

[nook24]

Is there a schedule available for this feature?

Many people seem to be holding off moving to the FF ecosystem simply because they can’t carry their privately stored data without the additional cost of setting up an account server.

This is exactly the reason why I don't use FF sync on any of my devices. Just because a self-hosted sync server it's not implemented on iOS :(