Comments for Kirk's Tech Diary

Comment on Lock preferences in Firefox 3 on Ubuntu by kirk

kirk — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:33:39 +0000

jglepage, I tried several things including storing firefox.cfg in /etc/firefox-3.0/pref/ and then using a relative path to it in the general.config.filename entry. None of them worked.

So, I did a brute-force kludge of storing firefox.cfg in /etc/firefox-3.0/pref/ and creating a bash script also stored in /etc/firefox-3.0/pref/ that runs via crontab every minute to copy firefox.cfg to the /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.x directory.

I need to install a 9.04 test setup in VirtualBox to see if they fixed it. If not, I’ll submit a bug report suggesting that they add the lines to the end of firefox.js and include a firefox.cfg in /etc/firefox-3.0/pref/ with a symlink to it in the installation directory.

Comment on Lock preferences in Firefox 3 on Ubuntu by kirk

kirk — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:53:14 +0000

jglepage, Thanks for the feedback. It’s great to hear that you can use firefox.js instead of having to create loadcustom.js. I’ll update the post to reflect that.

I’ll try out a couple of techniques to make firefox.cfg persistent and post an update when I get something to work.

Comment on Lock preferences in Firefox 3 on Ubuntu by jglepage

jglepage — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:57:28 +0000

Your technique works. However, it seems to fail when firefox upgrades. The main problem is that the firefox.cfg file must be placed in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.x, and this directory changes each time firefox is upgraded. The firefox.cfg file is not copied over to the new directory. I have tested this in upgrade from 3.0.11 to 3.0.13 on Ubuntu 8.04.

I’ve been all over the forums and bugzilla, and I can find no solution that continues to work after a firefox upgrade.

It’s possible to keep the changes to firefox.js if you use /etc/firefox-3.0/pref/firefox.js. However, you still have to put the firefox.cfg file in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.x/. Upon upgrade, the firefox.cfg is not copied over to the new /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.(x+1)/ directory.

Does anyone know a way of doing this that survives upgrades.

See a longer description of my techniqe below:
I’m attempting to lock firefox preferences, specifically network.proxy.type.

My technique works, but breaks when upgrades happen. Here’s how I do it:

append the following to /etc/firefox-3.0/pref/firefox.js:
//
pref(“general.config.obscure_value”, 0); // for MCD .cfg files
pref(“general.config.filename”, “firefox.cfg”);

…then put firefox.cfg in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.x/, where 3.0.x is the currently installed version.
Contents of firefox.cfg:
//
lockPref(“network.proxy.type”, 4);

This works. The network settings are locked at “automatically detect network settings”. However, upon upgrade, the firefox.cfg is NOT copied to the new installation directory. Also, apt is unable to delete the old installation directory, probably because the new firefox.cfg file is not by apt.

How do you manage to lock settings and NOT have things break upon upgrade?

I Need to be able to manage dozens of machines, and I would prefer not to have to reconfigure everytime firefox upgrades.

Comment on Lock preferences in Firefox 3 on Ubuntu by tenfishsticks

tenfishsticks — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:02:55 +0000

Great tutorial! Worked like a charm.

Comment on DreamHost Statistics While Running WordPress by vnunez

vnunez — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:55:36 +0000

Not to muck up your blog, but I have a question about Drupal as a CMS, I remember you preferred Joomla (sp?).

Also, I am curious about the efficacy of Solaris or Linux for our library OS. I saw a presentation about a library (closer to you, Howard County in Maryland) that uses Linux and Open Office, Firefox for applications. How does that all work? Where do I start?

I have an old laptop at home I could load with either Solaris or Linux, could be my sandbox.