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How to setup a Firefox Kiosk via CLI on Linux with no Desktop Environment (only X + openbox)

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  • 1 has this problem
  • 19 views
  • Last reply by Mike Kaply

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I've found plenty of instructions for setting up a web kiosk on linux with just X and openbox, but they all use the chromium browser. I've searched the web as to how to do this with firefox. I've tried to simply use the instructions for chromium but change things over to firefox, but I'm not sure what the equivalent paths/files are in firefox.

I've got a VM (to test with) and got the chromium setup working (just so that I know X and openbox are behaving). Here is where I'm getting stuck in /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart:

===

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State'

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences

chromium-browser --disable-infobars --kiosk '<http://your-url-here>'

===

I'm not at all sure where the equivalent of "~/.config/chromium/"Local State" would be for firefox. Surely under the ./mozilla/firefox directory, but I know not where.

Same thing for the second sed line, no idea about the equivalent.

The actual command I presume is 'firefox --kiosk 'url of choice'

I've commented out the 'sed' lines and get firefox to start ONCE, but it alwasy exits X uncleanly and times out with getting a lock on .Xauthority. If I remove firefox and delete the .mozilla folder and then reinstall firefox, it will again work only once. When it does work like this, it takes about two minutes for firefox to come up as compared to the chromium setup that only takes several seconds.

Any thoughts or help would be VERY appreciated.

TIA,

Joe

I've found plenty of instructions for setting up a web kiosk on linux with just X and openbox, but they all use the chromium browser. I've searched the web as to how to do this with firefox. I've tried to simply use the instructions for chromium but change things over to firefox, but I'm not sure what the equivalent paths/files are in firefox. I've got a VM (to test with) and got the chromium setup working (just so that I know X and openbox are behaving). Here is where I'm getting stuck in /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart: =============== sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State' sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences chromium-browser --disable-infobars --kiosk '<http://your-url-here>' =============== I'm not at all sure where the equivalent of "~/.config/chromium/"Local State" would be for firefox. Surely under the ./mozilla/firefox directory, but I know not where. Same thing for the second sed line, no idea about the equivalent. The actual command I presume is 'firefox --kiosk 'url of choice' I've commented out the 'sed' lines and get firefox to start ONCE, but it alwasy exits X uncleanly and times out with getting a lock on .Xauthority. If I remove firefox and delete the .mozilla folder and then reinstall firefox, it will again work only once. When it does work like this, it takes about two minutes for firefox to come up as compared to the chromium setup that only takes several seconds. Any thoughts or help would be VERY appreciated. TIA, Joe

All Replies (2)

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Hi Netopia:

Not sure if a Local State feature is supported in Kiosk Mode. I don't see it in the documentation:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-enterprise-kiosk-mode

I will ask some Enterprise folks to take a look.

Cheers!

..Roland

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Is Local State just where Chrome stores preference? I can't find any documentation on it.

The only way I can think of to see if Firefox exited cleanly is to check for the file "parent.lock" in the profile directory. IF it is there, Firefox did not exit cleanly (you can just delete it)

I'm not sure what to do about the lock on .XAuthority.

This sounds like something we would need a Linux person to take a look at.

Your syntax is correct for Firefox kiosk.