Synopsis:
Netscape Roaming Services: Central storage of bookmarks, addressbooks, preferences, e-mail filters.

Solution:
The ability for users to store their e-mail address book and browser bookmarks on a server and "roam" to these personal files was a feature exclusive to Netscape Communicator versions 4.5 or 4.7x, but NOT Netscape version 7. Netscape Roaming was a deprecated service and was discontinued on October 27, 2004.

Netscape versions 4.x and 7x have become out-of-date and are no longer maintained by the vendor. Because of this, Netscape no longer works well with the web-based applications used on campus, including administrative applications such as PeopleSoft. In addition, the vendor has stopped product development on the e-mail client and no new features will be added. OIT support for these outdated versions of Netscape is reduced significantly.

For people who are familiar and comfortable with the Netscape interface, try any of the "Mozilla flavor" applications available from www.mozilla.org. Download and install the SeaMonkey Suite, or, for just an e-mail program alternative, try Thunderbird. These programs are heavily supported by OIT. For more information on modern e-mail programs, please see Solution 5088.

The following information regarding Netscape Roaming Services is for archival purposes only

Currently, if you overwrite your server address book or bookmark file with the incorrect files, OIT will make every best effort to restore these files, although backups are NOT done nightly. There are a myriad of client-side factors that can cause the "wrong" files to get uploaded to the server or not get uploaded at all.

You should always log in as Guest whenever you use Roaming in a public cluster or on someone else's computer. Using the Guest Profile allows you to use your own Communicator environment without modifying someone else's account or computer. You should use the Guest Profile when using another computer temporarily (such as in a cluster) as well as when using someone else's computer for an extended period of time (such as a vacationing friend's computer). Roaming accounts which have been inactive for six months will be deleted.

Bookmarks, cookies, mail filters, addressbooks and preferences CAN be saved to roam with your profile. Your history, Java security, certificates, and private keys CANNOT roam.

Before OIT can perform a restore, the following questions should be asked:

1. Are you actively using the Roaming Service (i.e., your Preferences are set to upload bookmarks to roaming.princeton.edu)?

NO -> Restoring Netscape bookmarks from roaming.princeton.edu is not an appropriate course of action. There will not be any recent bookmarks file to restore. You may need to have the local bookmarks file restored from your TSM backup.

YES -> Please note the version of Netscape that you are using. Netscape made some file name changes between certain versions and it helps CSG to know what version of the software you are using.

2. Are you roaming between different machines?

NO -> We can try restoring the bookmarks file. The results will vary depending on whether you allowed the upload to proceed or clicked cancel. The results also depend on whether or not the upload succeeded --- did not get aborted midstream, etc. (Also, please note that there is no real reason to be roaming if you are only using one machine).

YES -> We can try restoring your file. But, again, the version uploaded to roaming.princeton.edu server may not be the version that you want. A number of factors influence what has beed stored on the server: Preferences settings, whether or not the upload succeeded, what machine was last used, etc.

After a restore, if the restored file is not the correct one, the possibility exists that we do not have the version you want on the roaming server backups.