copying all chrome config data to different user (SOLVED)

[David L]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 12:50 PM, David L <david4lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have historically had problems with my desktop environment when I use
> the same user home directory on a dual boot system (eg, when I have 16.10
> on one partition and 18.04 on another). Therefore, I like to use different
> user home directories for myself for each environment and copy or symlink
> directories that I can share without compatibility quirks. I would like to
> be able to have ALL data related to google-chrome accessible in both
> systems. I have dozens of user-data-dir's for various things I work on,
> each with their own stored passwords, cookies, etc. Based on some google
> searches, I thought I could copy everything I needed between the two home
> directories by copying the user-data-dir directories and the
> .config/google-chrome directory, but my stored passwords do not transfer.
> Does anybody know how I can get everything I need (and nothing I don't
> need) from one home directory and put it in another to get google-chrome
> (or chromium-browser) to just work on a dual boot system with isolated home
> directories for the same user?
>
> Thanks,
>
>           David
>
> PS - I don't want to have to export passwords and import them... it seems
> like I should be able to just copy the right files/directories, which I can
> do from the command line quickly for dozens of user-data-dirs that each
> maintain different passwords.
>
> Thanks to Colin Law for pointing me in the right direction, I figured this
out.

In kubuntu, this was the missing stuff:

.local
└── share
   └── kwalletd
       ├── kdewallet.kwl
       └── kdewallet.salt

I didn't need anything from .kde, nor .config... only:

.local/share/kwalletd
 /home/david/chrome-user-data-dir*

Extracting those directories is all I needed to get multiple google-chrome
profiles up and running with passwords working. I suspect I would have
needed .config/google-chrome if I used the default profile without a custom
user-data-dir, but I have not verified that suspicion.

I assume there is an equivalent directory that would need to be copied for
gnome, but I haven't investigated that either.

Thanks,

         David

PS - For those that questioned the motivation for doing this, here are the
times when I found I needed this functionality:

1) When I was on vacation once, I wanted to log into a web site for which I
had forgotten the password, but I knew it was stored in a specific profile
to which I had access via scp. But copying the profile directory alone
didn't work.
2) When I'm beta testing a new Ubuntu release, before committing to
upgrade, I test the environment for a few days and make sure that
everything I do on a daily basis (including accessing multiple chrome
profiles) is working well. So I copy a subset of my home directory to a
temporary account on the beta test partition.
3) When I have a hard drive crash and I want to extract all of the stuff
from my backup that I use on a daily basis without years of cruft.
4) When an ubuntu upgrade behaves poorly with respect to my desktop
environment and I want to blow away almost all desktop related config and
start from nearly scratch, I want to pull a minimal set of stuff from my
backup and start with a fresh home directory wrt environment, but I still
want my chrome passwords.

And as for why I have many (10 to 20 ... I exaggerated when I said 100)
chrome profiles, I work for multiple companies, and I have gmail accounts
for several of them. Google tools are much happier when run from
independent profiles. Also I do a lot of genealogy research, and I maintain
a profile for each relative whose DNA I have tested on 3 different testing
sites and I have the passwords cached for each of the 3 sites for each
person. When I am researching a specific person, I run from that google
profile and can get into all of the sites without diddling with which login
I need to use. I have shortcuts to open google-chrome for each relative and
each employer and it works very well for me except for the now-solved issue
with migrating the profiles.
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