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How do I change the firefox appdata path

  • 6 svar
  • 3 har dette problemet
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  • Siste svar av Tom Farrow

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Hi, I'm usually answering, but today I need an answer. My school are looking to get firefox, but we have a problem. To lock preferences, we're using addons. The problem is that we have active directories etc setup, so each user has their own appdata. Now we need one of 3 things so that we can lock down: 1. A default appdata folder - a way to set firefox so everybody that uses our firefox uses one profile (run is disable, no profile manager) 2. A way to disable the firefox addon lock down by default. I found the extensions folder in the install directory, but when a new user uses firefox, it asks if they want to install the addon. That would mean if the user clicks no, they can bypass our proxy etc. 3. Setup firefox so every time a new USER (notice user, not profile) uses firefox for the first time, their account grabs settings from somewhere else.

Most importantly, this needs to be suitable in a school environment. People have already took advantage out of our old proxy system, we've got a new one on it's way. Some people break the law just to go on Facebook at school. This can't be a vulnerable system. Unless of course you need access to the C partition to exploit it, GPO stops that.

Hi, I'm usually answering, but today I need an answer. My school are looking to get firefox, but we have a problem. To lock preferences, we're using addons. The problem is that we have active directories etc setup, so each user has their own appdata. Now we need one of 3 things so that we can lock down: 1. A default appdata folder - a way to set firefox so everybody that uses our firefox uses one profile (run is disable, no profile manager) 2. A way to disable the firefox addon lock down by default. I found the extensions folder in the install directory, but when a new user uses firefox, it asks if they want to install the addon. That would mean if the user clicks no, they can bypass our proxy etc. 3. Setup firefox so every time a new USER (notice user, not profile) uses firefox for the first time, their account grabs settings from somewhere else. Most importantly, this needs to be suitable in a school environment. People have already took advantage out of our old proxy system, we've got a new one on it's way. Some people break the law just to go on Facebook at school. This can't be a vulnerable system. Unless of course you need access to the C partition to exploit it, GPO stops that.

Endret av Tom Farrow

Valgt løsning

Use a mozilla.cfg file in the Firefox program folder to lock prefs or specify default values.

Place a file local-settings.js in the defaults\pref folder where you also find the file channel-prefs.js to specify using mozilla.cfg.

pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); // use this to disable the byte-shift

See:

You can use these functions in mozilla.cfg:

defaultPref();  // set new default value
pref();         // set pref, but allow changes in current session
lockPref();     // lock pref, disallow changes

To prevent users from installing software (extensions) use:

lockPref("xpinstall.enabled", false);

You can initialize a profile by creating a defaults\profile folder in the Firefox program folder (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\) and place files like a user.js or a bookmarks.html file in it.

User.js is read on every start of Firefox, so changes made to preferences won't last across a browser session.

Les dette svaret i sammenhengen 👍 2

All Replies (6)

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Valgt løsning

Use a mozilla.cfg file in the Firefox program folder to lock prefs or specify default values.

Place a file local-settings.js in the defaults\pref folder where you also find the file channel-prefs.js to specify using mozilla.cfg.

pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); // use this to disable the byte-shift

See:

You can use these functions in mozilla.cfg:

defaultPref();  // set new default value
pref();         // set pref, but allow changes in current session
lockPref();     // lock pref, disallow changes

To prevent users from installing software (extensions) use:

lockPref("xpinstall.enabled", false);

You can initialize a profile by creating a defaults\profile folder in the Firefox program folder (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\) and place files like a user.js or a bookmarks.html file in it.

User.js is read on every start of Firefox, so changes made to preferences won't last across a browser session.

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Thanks cor-el, you're a legend. Can I stop users from visiting about: pages other than the ones listed on about: ? As I said, some people are clever at my school. We need a complete lock down to stop some of the kids in bottom set, never mind top set (like me). There are people my age (12) that know things about these proxies, which we're not taught about until in 3 years time. They won't struggle to find an about:config page.

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If you lock a pref then it is impossible to change such a pref on the about:config page.


You can compare a copy of prefs.js before and after having changed a setting to see which pref(s) to lock.

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Can I stop updates altogether? I'd prefer the school to repackage the major updates than getting an update every few days.

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You can lock the value of the app.update.url pref to an empty String value to make it impossible to contact the update server and lock the app.update.enabled pref to false.

lockPref("app.update.url", "");
lockPref("app.update.enabled", false);
lockPref("app.update.auto", false);
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Ahh, okay. We don't have access to C so if we had updates enabled, ff would kick out some errors.