Arch Linux

nbd

Member

Registered: 2014-08-04

Posts: 389

[SOLVED] Managing Firefox through policies

Hello,

I'm trying to configure Firefox through the JSON policies file and fail to make it work. I don't have Archlinux's FF package and use FF ESR 78.3.1 release downloaded from mozilla.org. On mozilla's website it's said that FF autoupdates can be disabled by creating a 'policies.json' file with the following contents:

{
  "policies": {
    "DisableAppUpdate": true
  }
}

and placing this file either into the 'distribution' directory under the FF installation directory (in my case it's /opt/firefox) or into /etc/firefox/policies directory. I tried both and nothing makes any changes (FF continues to check for updates and there is no mention on the Preferences page that FF is configured through policies and AutoUpdate options aren't disabled, like I see on Windows).

Has anyone had successful experience with policies in Firefox? How to use them on ArchLinux?

Last edited by nbd (2020-10-23 16:25:57)

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bing different

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,920

Re: [SOLVED] Managing Firefox through policies

No clue, archlinux firefox packages (repo and aur) use a different mechanism and disable updates at build time.

Maybe you can use https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-esr or https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-esr-bin ?

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,193

Re: [SOLVED] Managing Firefox through policies

The system policy file seems to work at least with the repo version:

$  tree -pugs /etc/firefox
/etc/firefox
└── [drwxr-xr-x root     root            4096]  policies
    └── [-rw-r--r-- root     root              52]  policies.json

1 directory, 1 file
$ cat /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json
{
 "policies": {
    "CaptivePortal": false
    }
}
$

Policy Name     Policy Value
CaptivePortal    false

Last edited by progandy (2020-10-23 10:34:39)

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nbd

Member

Registered: 2014-08-04

Posts: 389

Re: [SOLVED] Managing Firefox through policies

The problem obviously was in that I, for testing if the policy works, started a new instance of FF without closing already running one. After having closed all instances, on a new start of FF the policy has taken effect.

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bing different