11 thoughts on - C5: The Firefox ESR 45.1.0 Nighmare

• Errr… you mean Red Hat released a security update (see https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0695.html), and CentOS
  rebuilt and released it.

  What, exactly, would you like the CentOS maintainers to do differently? Are you volunteering your time to help?

• Basically all they did was to move from the old ESR base (38) to the current one (45) so that they could keep current with the (mozilla)
  upstream ESR release branch. I don’t believe that the 38ESR that rhel/CentOS was running was particularly “customized”.

  The issue of the signed extension requirement has been in the works for some time, with implementation starting with FF40. Since the previous ESR branch was based on 38, ESR didn’t see this until just now when the release was based on 45.

  The issue for ESR people is that they didn’t get eased into it the way standard FF users did – over the course of three releases. FF40
  was released in october of last year, so by now hopefully extension developers have gotten their code signed.

  This explains the extension signing, and timeline, a bit:

  <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Addons/Extension_Signing>

  Note that the unsigned override that you used is going away with FF47.

• I would really like to help but I lack the time with many many demands on time I don’t have.

  CentOS might form a special interests group specifically for the existing Firefox ESR browser. Another poster recently stated Mozilla was dropping ESR versions which is likely to jeopardise browser stability.

  Ultimately it would be nice for a Firefox folk removing privacy breeches, phoning home, allowing web sites to secretly store data
  (despite options turned-off) and removal of lots of crap unnecessary for the vast majority of Enterprise users. It could eliminate the constant changes – often apparently just to amuse Firefox developers – which users seem to hate.

  When using the yum GUI update notification service, no reasons for updates are visible.

  No good issuing a security improvement when, as Johnny replied in another posting,

  ” With respect to CentOS-5, it seems this patch was not
  migrated to the 45.0.1 install:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id25187

  from this bugzilla:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id21368 “

  essential parts were omitted. Perhaps Up-Stream were pre-occupied with another fundamental change to the product we know and love ? (well, not C7 yet)

  I use Firefox extensively for a multitude of tasks.

• It was an unexpected major shock.

  The problem remains add-ons just won’t install after being downloaded. Perhaps one should revert to FF 38, re-install add-ons and then upgrade to FF 45 – then start playing about to get those add-ons to be re-accepted.

  Not exactly my chosen method of making a product “user friendly”.

• Thanks for the link. I like the idea of a so-called non-FF branded version (USA english only) which does not re-enforce the Mozilla Approval requirement.

  ” How will the unbranded versions of Firefox work?

  ” They will work just like Firefox, with two differences:
  they will have a setting to disable mandatory signature checks,
  and they will not have the Firefox name and logo (instead using a generic name and logo). They will be available in the en-US
  locale only. “

  Perhaps that might form a suitable replacement for ESR versions ?

• Always Learning writes:

  The reason behind this is the missing patch referenced by Johnny’s posting that you referenced in a follow-up.

  What I would really like to see, talking about SIGs and such, is an rpm for palemoon, but I fear it can’t be done on C5. Even C6 only would help, although I’m hesitating to move my main desktop off 5; the C6 desktop simply doesn’t have the same stability and performance, and having to log off/log on just because PA behaves irratically is really annoying.

• Given: RHEL5 goes end of life on 2017-03-31, which is 47 weeks, 6 days, 13
  hours, 40 minutes, and 50 seconds from now

  and that even now the updates are limited to critical (ie remote code execution) pretty much might I suggest now is a good time to be thinking about that future of that system and if not move to C7 at least move to C6?

  I can’t even imagine the pain of using C5 as a desktop in today’s world …

• –bRIKsxVVjfxVjcLcdmAF9rKFi00Dkumbe Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

  OK, when red hat releases a firefox update, we build it. It is a rebuild of the upstream code, as is are all other CentOS packages.

  So, we will work with the Red Hat maintainer to address any issues, like we did with the unix plice bug .. BUT .. we will build and release any source code that is released for RHEL .. that is what CentOS Linux is, a rebuild of the RHEL Source Code, when it is released.

  So, it does not matter if the packages are broken or not. If the CentOS
  team did not make changes that did the breaking, we will not be issueing fixes UNTIL Red Hat does in the RHEL Source Code. It the CentOS team did make a branding change, and that change is responsible for breaking something, we will of course fix that ASAP and release.

  In the case of this firefox release, Red Hat has acknowledged they need to fix it in the RHEL Source Code here:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1221368

  Therefore, I have made a new temporary version available here, for people who would opt to get the new version and not wait:

  http://people.CentOS.org/hughesjr/firefox-45.1.0-1.1.el5.CentOS/

  If you want either the 1386 and/or x86_64 versions, please manually download and install them.

  Thanks, Johnny HUghes

  –bRIKsxVVjfxVjcLcdmAF9rKFi00Dkumbe

• I am conservative with somethings but adventurous with others.

  C5’s Gnome desktop is stable and satisfies all my needs because it is reliable and always works well; FF45 being the exception.

  C6 is set-up on a faster, quieter development machine with double the RAM and USB3. When my last C5 production server moves to C6, then I’ll have to say a gratefully metaphorical farewell to my dependable C5
  development machine “its been really great knowing you”.

  Stability and reliability are essential for basic computer work. C7 has yet to convince me it is worth the considerable investment in time and energy relearning how to operate and use it. That is why Valerie’s BSD
  philosophy appears attractive (the manual from 1998 remains largely unread). I’ll stay with C6 for as long as possible.

  Please don’t demean something (i.e. C5 and its desktop) which has been a wonderful and enjoyable experience.

• Wonderful, marvellous and I’m delightfully (and gratefully) happy again. Brilliant.

  Thank you Johnny.

• It surfaces over and over again… I will try to stress it (from outside, as I am not in CentOS team) again.

  CentOS is binary replica of RedHat Enterprise Linux, and this is what it should stay, and we hope it will. We do use it because of what it is. And I at least once thanked myself for choosing RedHat, and then RedHat’s descendant CentOS. You may remember when random number generator bug in Debian (great distribution IMHO !!) was discovered (that affected all Debian clones as well: Ubuntu, maemo…). My friend sysadmin next door –
  whose everything was Debian – was like a crazy re-generating all key pairs, certificates, and still you can’t be sure then didn’t walk in and… That day (those days actually) I was just sitting relaxed in my chair and thanked myself for choosing RedHat (Fedora and CentOS), as RedHad never had a flop of that level in my recollection.

  Let’s thank CentOS team for the great job they are doing, and stop forcing them to stress over and over again that CentOS is binary replica of RedHat Enterprise (I know strictly speaking the last in not correct, but it is the most transparent way for me to say it).

  Grateful CentOS user,

  Valeri

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  Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
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