[opensuse] switching Firefox to manual updates check
Hi All, I've migrated to 10.2 which includes Firefox 2 by default. netstat showed Firefox contacting mozilla.org and google.com at each launch and seeming to stay connected for awhile. (i.e. not obviously transient) I drilled down into 'Edit -> Preferences...' to see if I could disable this activity because I prefer to check for updates manually. The checkbox for 'Firefox' was already empty but 'Installed Add-ons' and 'Search Engines' were each checked. I unchecked them, closed Firefox and relaunched it. The results from 'netstat -nutap': tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:23278 63.245.209.21:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:23279 63.245.209.21:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin When I returned to the relevant menu, the 'Firefox' updates setting was *missing*... leaving only the unchecked (by me) 'Installed Add-ons' and 'Search Engines'. Has anybody already dealt with this issue? I really prefer checking for updates to Firefox myself, not at every launch (it isn't always convenient.) Does anyone know what the 'Search Engine' updates search is all about? TIA & regards, Carl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Addendum: Several minutes after copying/pasting the netstat results into the post I was preparing, Firefox contacted Google again: tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:18513 72.14.253.91:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin I'd already disabled the 'Search Engines' updates(?!) check and restarted Firefox, so I'd like to know what this is all about! And, no, my start page isn't Google... it's a self-maintained bookmarks.html stored locally. TIA & regards, Carl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carl Hartung wrote:
Addendum:
Several minutes after copying/pasting the netstat results into the post I was preparing, Firefox contacted Google again:
tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:18513 72.14.253.91:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin
I'd already disabled the 'Search Engines' updates(?!) check and restarted Firefox, so I'd like to know what this is all about! And, no, my start page isn't Google... it's a self-maintained bookmarks.html stored locally.
TIA & regards,
Carl
Suggest that you ask the question directly in the FF forum, here- http://forums.mozillazine.org/ You'll get a quicker answer. Oh, you'll need to join the forums before you can post there. Not many people use real names there from what I have seen :-) . Cheers. -- In a period of great joy and pleasure you are comforted by the thought that tragedy is just around the corner. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hi, Carl Hartung wrote:
netstat showed Firefox contacting mozilla.org and google.com at each launch and seeming to stay connected for awhile. (i.e. not obviously transient)
I drilled down into 'Edit -> Preferences...' to see if I could disable this activity because I prefer to check for updates manually.
The checkbox for 'Firefox' was already empty but 'Installed Add-ons' and 'Search Engines' were each checked. I unchecked them, closed Firefox and relaunched it. The results from 'netstat -nutap':
tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:23278 63.245.209.21:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:23279 63.245.209.21:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin
When I returned to the relevant menu, the 'Firefox' updates setting was *missing*... leaving only the unchecked (by me) 'Installed Add-ons' and 'Search Engines'.
The reason that the Firefox update setting is missing sometimes seems to be some race condition in the XUL refreshing. Since Firefox updates wouldn't work in RPM installs it's deactivated by removing the menu item but in some cases it still appears. It's just a cosmetic problem. The box should be greyed out anyway since Firefox detects that it has no write permissions in the installation directory.
Has anybody already dealt with this issue? I really prefer checking for updates to Firefox myself, not at every launch (it isn't always convenient.) Does anyone know what the 'Search Engine' updates search is all about?
Search Engines can be updated because they could change their URI or alike. I don't have an answer right now which data is pulled from mozilla.org or Google in your case if the updates are disabled. If you are interested you might to have a closer look at your TCP traffic via wireshark or tcpdump to actually see which data is transferred. If it turns out to be a bug, feel free to report it here, at bugzilla.novell.com or/and bugzilla.mozilla.org. Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hi, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote: [...]
Since Firefox updates wouldn't work in RPM installs it's deactivated by removing the menu item but in some cases it still appears. It's just a cosmetic problem. The box should be greyed out anyway since Firefox detects that it has no write permissions in the installation directory.
This is not necessarily the case. Basically you can update firefox in rpm installs, as well. I did this multiple times, actually I did it anytime I thought the suse supplied updates were late ;-)) What I do: Start firefox briefly as root: 1. sux - 2 . firefox 3. Enable the "update firefox" box within firefox preferences 3. Have it updated and have the updates written to the install directory (because you are root, this is not a problem). Beware: This is one of the rare occasions that you use the Internet as root!! So it is as dangerous as most windows installations are, but on a 24x7 basis ;-) 4. close firefox 5. Then restart firefox as normal user and have it updated in regard to extensions and themes. 6. Use your updated version of firefox Disadvantage:
From then on, you are on your own in regards to firefox updates from SUSE , but you said, you prefer to do your updates manually.;-))
Up to now, this worked nicely for me. Should you encounter the problem that you cannot activate firerfox updates, because they are greyed out, it is always an easy option to remove the suse firefox that came with your OS and install the latest+greatest from mozilla.com . regards Eberhard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Eberhard Roloff wrote:
This is not necessarily the case. Basically you can update firefox in rpm installs, as well. I did this multiple times, actually I did it anytime I thought the suse supplied updates were late ;-))
What I do: [deleted "unsafe" description]
Disadvantage: From then on, you are on your own in regards to firefox updates from SUSE , but you said, you prefer to do your updates manually.;-))
Up to now, this worked nicely for me. Should you encounter the problem that you cannot activate firerfox updates, because they are greyed out, it is always an easy option to remove the suse firefox that came with your OS and install the latest+greatest from mozilla.com .
In case SUSE updates are late there is a mozilla repository in the buildservice which has updated packages usually at the same time as mozilla.com. And then you - don't break RPM consistency - don't loose special SUSE integration features Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 11:36 +0100, Eberhard Roloff wrote:
Hi, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
[...]
Since Firefox updates wouldn't work in RPM installs it's deactivated by removing the menu item but in some cases it still appears. It's just a cosmetic problem. The box should be greyed out anyway since Firefox detects that it has no write permissions in the installation directory.
This is not necessarily the case. Basically you can update firefox in rpm installs, as well. I did this multiple times, actually I did it anytime I thought the suse supplied updates were late ;-))
What I do: Start firefox briefly as root: 1. sux - 2 . firefox 3. Enable the "update firefox" box within firefox preferences 3. Have it updated and have the updates written to the install directory (because you are root, this is not a problem). Beware: This is one of the rare occasions that you use the Internet as root!! So it is as dangerous as most windows installations are, but on a 24x7 basis ;-) 4. close firefox 5. Then restart firefox as normal user and have it updated in regard to extensions and themes. 6. Use your updated version of firefox
This seems the hard way. I update FF by installing their tar gz into a user directory and test. If I am satisfied as root I move it over to /usr/opt then as User I run whereis and convert the old FF to a link to the new. Now users can handle their own extentions which are stored in their local space. Of course this is 9.2 soon to be 10.0. Why is 10.2 making these things so difficult? -- ___ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ | | | | [__ | | | |___ |_|_| ___] | \/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carl Hartung wrote:
I've migrated to 10.2 which includes Firefox 2 by default.
netstat showed Firefox contacting mozilla.org and google.com at each launch and seeming to stay connected for awhile. (i.e. not obviously transient)
I drilled down into 'Edit -> Preferences...' to see if I could disable this activity because I prefer to check for updates manually.
The checkbox for 'Firefox' was already empty but 'Installed Add-ons' and 'Search Engines' were each checked. I unchecked them, closed Firefox and relaunched it. The results from 'netstat -nutap':
tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:23278 63.245.209.21:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin tcp 0 0 192.168.1.47:23279 63.245.209.21:80 ESTABLISHED 30940/firefox-bin
When I returned to the relevant menu, the 'Firefox' updates setting was *missing*... leaving only the unchecked (by me) 'Installed Add-ons' and 'Search Engines'.
I've just tried it myself deactivated all update functionality, disabled the start page and logged the network traffic for 30-40 seconds after Firefox start. What I see is a HTTP connect to en-US.fxfeeds.mozilla.com [63.245.209.21]. This matches your observations in the above case and this happens because of the default livebookmark "Latest Headlines" which is included by default. If you have that in your bookmarks it'll load the recent news from the mozilla.com server. Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Saturday 06 January 2007 04:36, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
I've just tried it myself deactivated all update functionality, disabled the start page and logged the network traffic for 30-40 seconds after Firefox start.
What I see is a HTTP connect to en-US.fxfeeds.mozilla.com [63.245.209.21]. This matches your observations in the above case and this happens because of the default livebookmark "Latest Headlines" which is included by default. If you have that in your bookmarks it'll load the recent news from the mozilla.com server.
Thank you very much for your feedback, Wolfgang. I'll look at this more deeply over the weekend. I have no 'live' links in the hand-maintained local start page, so the connections are resulting from settings elsewhere. regards, Carl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carl Hartung wrote:
On Saturday 06 January 2007 04:36, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
I've just tried it myself deactivated all update functionality, disabled the start page and logged the network traffic for 30-40 seconds after Firefox start.
What I see is a HTTP connect to en-US.fxfeeds.mozilla.com [63.245.209.21]. This matches your observations in the above case and this happens because of the default livebookmark "Latest Headlines" which is included by default. If you have that in your bookmarks it'll load the recent news from the mozilla.com server.
Thank you very much for your feedback, Wolfgang.
I'll look at this more deeply over the weekend. I have no 'live' links in the hand-maintained local start page, so the connections are resulting from settings elsewhere.
I'm not sure if you just explained not clearly enough but the bookmarks I'm talking about is not on any start page but in the user's bookmark list. I wonder just because the IP address exactly fits your description so I really would have thought that this bookmark is active in your configuration. Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (5)
-
Basil Chupin -
Carl Hartung -
Carl William Spitzer IV -
Eberhard Roloff -
Wolfgang Rosenauer