FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Place to exchange experience about rolling out Adblock Plus to many computers, preconfiguring the extension etc.
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loeten
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:17 pm

FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Post by loeten »

Hi all, i am new and apologize in advance if i did not find THE post yet with the answer to my question, even if i did some searches.

I try to do a global installation of Adblock plus in Firefox on Win7 computers. i read here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Installing_extensions

So i downloaded and unzipped the .xpi file into a folder "{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}" under [install]\browser\extensions

That works as far as when starting Firefox again, it asks the user wether to install this plugin - but i want to have it installed without this question.

Questions:

1) how can i prevent this asking but go on install immidiately and
2) (because i sayed "no"/did not check the allowance to have a 2nd try) - now it just starts without Adblock Plus - how can i get it to "ask again" wether it should install (just to have the same test conditions as i would have never started it)?

Thanks for any help!
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Matze
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:41 am

Re: FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Post by Matze »

Hi loeten,

please consider this issue in the Mozilla tracker: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476430 - it seems like your issue is an actual feature they've implemented explicitly. The thread discussion there is quite long though, but the commits and patch sets (e.g. http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/eee41544cb84) pretty much sum it up: "Disable third-party add-ons by default and offer them to the user."

Still, according to Mike Kaply's blog, one can easily disable this new feature by setting the extensions.autoDisableScopes option to 0; see http://mike.kaply.com/2012/02/09/integr ... o-firefox/. Note, however, that he mentions this approach being suboptimal in a later post, also suggesting an alternative: http://mike.kaply.com/2012/02/21/unders ... on-scopes/.

Regarding your second question, re-setting the installation for a particular user, I'd assume that removing any adblockplus.* option via about:config should have the desired effect.

Please note that I haven't tried anything of the above it myself yet, due to the lack of a Windows machine right now. So please let us know about the results when you've got a chance to try it out!

Cheers,
Matze
loeten
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:17 pm

Re: FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Post by loeten »

ok and thanks, i will try this options. Maybe i do too complicated: I "just" want to prepare a number of PC images automatically to roll out - where users can log on later, in an office environment (as admin) - So i just want when the user logs in and starts firefox, that he has ABP already up and running.

Is there an easyer way, without logging in "as the user" before ?
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Matze
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:41 am

Re: FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Post by Matze »

Hi!

Unfortunately it's not that easy yet, but possible. You seem to be on a good way to actually achieve the setup you desire (providing Firefox/ABP directly from your images), but it also seems like you are wondering how to set FF options without the GUI (or human interaction at roll-out time), especially for the aforementioned extensions.autoDisableScopes setting.. In that case, you may want check out the default-preference and auto-config files, you'll be able to apply the browser settings there.

Cheers!
Matze
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Matze
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:41 am

Re: FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Post by Matze »

Hi again,

since your issue is probably a very common one, I decided to try it out. It was very easy to reproduce the behavior your describe, but I got it to work. Here are the basic steps:
  • Extract the extension into the "...\browser\extensions\{...}" directory (just as you've done already)
  • Place a JavaScript ("*.js") file in "...\browser\defaults\preferences\", with the following content:

    Code: Select all

    pref("extensions.autoDisableScopes", 0);
    
    (The directory may not exist yet, in which case you must create it first. Using e.g. "...\defaults\pref" instead does NOT work.)
  • Start Firefox
As said before, setting the value to 0 is not perfect, but for now it should be fine.

Finally, please note that I haven't found a solution for your second question; how to re-enable the installation after it has been declined (I used a virtual machine and simply triggered a roll-back after reproducing the issue). But I've learned that my suggestion in the first post does not work, and deleting the record from "extensions.localCache" does not work either.

Cheers!
Matze

PS: The entire test has been documented in screen-shots. The first dozen, however, contains just preparations (like e.g. downloading FF and ABP) and should not be relevant for you.
loeten
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:17 pm

Re: FF: auto global installation works, howto skip user question

Post by loeten »

Hey, great job - thanks a lot! I think a lot of admins will enjoy your step-by-step guide!
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