Firefox 3.6 oddity

[#1]

Has anybody had any success (or problems) when packaging Firefox 3.6? In our
case, my co-workers and I have attempted numerous different ways (Composer
7.1 drag/drop, snapshot, PackageMaker, etc.) of packaging Firefox 3.6 and we
cannot get the browser to work. If we download the application from the
Mozilla website, we can install it just fine; when we attempt to package
this one file browser, it fails.

When it fails, in both 10.4 and 10.5, the Firefox icon will bounce a few
times in the Dock, then stop. In some cases, we have been able to get the
Firefox browser to work by doing a "Get Info" on Firefox, checking "open
using Rosetta", open Firefox (it will work OK), close Firefox, and it will
work OK from then on out.

We have contacted JAMF tech support and they are working on the issue,
though I am curious about the success rate of packaging Firefox 3.6 among
users.

Thanks,

Sean
~~~~~~~
Sean Nesbitt
Macintosh Services Delivery
Lockheed Martin - Enterprise Business Services
~~~~~~~

[#2]

Sean,

I have bundled FireFox 3.6 by just using the 'New' snapshot method and it
appears to be working fine.

The only thing out of the ordinary I have modified is under the
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/FireFox/ directory. I have
renamed the default 'randomstring.default' folder to something consistent.

Ex. District.default

That folder is specified within the profiles.ini folder within the same
directory, so you will need to modify that file as well.

We do this here in case we ever needed to deploy something to the FireFox
profile. It complicates it if you have to try and script around that random
string so this is an easy way to head that off.

Not sure if this random string is causing any issues for you, but this would
be the only customization I have done with that installer package.

It would be worth a try, it's possible that something in that default
profile is not carrying over correctly when the package is installing to the
users folders or template.

Hope that helps

-- Jason Weber
Technology Support Cluster Specialist
Independent School District 196
jason.weber at district196.org

[#3]

I think the key here is removing your old Firefox version before laying
the new one down.

As said... running rm -r /Applications/Firefox.app/ before installing
seems to be the fix. I've found that Firefox 3.5.x user profiles seem to
update to 3.6 just fine on their own.

Chad

[RobertHammen]

Any time you are pushing out an individual application, rather than an installer package, it's always a good idea to run a script first (as part of the install policy) to remove the existing app (as the new package tends to add to, rather than completely overwrite, the existing one. This causes issues with apps like Firefox and Self Service, for example)...
On Mar 11, 2010, at 1:02 PM, Ryan Manly wrote:

something like:

#!/bin/bash
[ -d /Applications/Firefox.app/ ] && /bin/rm -rf /Applications/Firefox.app

You may want to find a way to notify the end user and/or killall Firefox before pushing out the new app (or run this on a logout trigger or something like that)...

I posted to the list back in January that the xpti.dat was the file in any/every existing profile which was causing Firefox 3.6 to hang at launch...

[dderusha]

or you could scope the policy to un-install the old version 3.5.8 and install the new version 3.6

in order to use un-install, you need to index the package in Casper Admin. When it is done being indexed, go back into the package - options tab
and check the casper can un-install

Dan

[#6]

I would then change the priority to a lower one than the 3.6 version. While I haven't had an issue with uninstalling and then installing, with adding Dock items, it doesn't always go in the order I select them.

I guess I would do that just to be safe, otherwise I would test thoroughly.

-Robert

[rmanly]

I pushed it out and it broke.

Had to make a policy to get rid of all Mozilla and Firefox config stuff and
rm -rf /Applications/Firefox.app and then lay down 3.5.8 fresh again.

Ryan M. Manly
Glenbrook High Schools
? ACSP ? ACMT