Firefox configuration method if CCK does not work?

current discussion

Greg Neagle has a nice writeup in one of the recent MacTech's (#350) as well.

edit: Apologies, you are explicitly asking for alternate methods. Will need to revisit this thread if/when current workflows break. We've got until ESR45 it would seem ... so a few weeks. :)

We set the Safari homepage via a script. I then run the following script which sets the Firefox homepage to match Safari. You could easily modify the script and set the $HomePage variable directly instead of pulling it from Safari like I do.

#!/bin/bash

# Get Safari HomePage
HomePage=`defaults read /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari HomePage`
if [ -z "$HomePage" ]; then
    echo "No Safari HomePage found"
    exit 0
fi
echo Safari HomePage is $HomePage

# Check for Firefox profile and create if needed
if [ ! -f /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini ]; then
    mkdir /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox
    mkdir /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles
    mkdir /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/6ijtz7da.default
    echo "[General]" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    echo "StartWithLastProfile=1" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    echo "" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    echo "[Profile0]" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    echo "Name=default" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    echo "IsRelative=1" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    echo "Path=Profiles/6ijtz7da.default" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini
    chown -R $3 /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox
    echo "Firefox profile created"
fi

# Get Firefox profile path
ProfileName=`grep -m 1 "Path=" /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini | cut -d '=' -f2`

# Remove existing browser.startup.homepage line(s)
if [ -f /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/$ProfileName/prefs.js ]; then
    sed -i '' '/"browser.startup.homepage"/ d' /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/$ProfileName/prefs.js
    echo "Existing browser.startup.homepage line(s) removed"
fi

# Set Firefox HomePage
touch /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/$ProfileName/prefs.js
echo "user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "$HomePage");" >> /Users/$3/Library/Application Support/Firefox/$ProfileName/prefs.js
echo "Firefox browser.startup.homepage set to $HomePage"

You can actually manually configure a number of Firefox settings by creating/editing the following files.

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/browser/override.ini
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/browser/defaults/profile/bookmarks.html
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/mozilla.cfg /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/defaults/pref/autoconfig.js

autoconfig.js & mozilla.cfg can actually have any names but the .js has to specify the .cfg file, what you will also find is that there are a bunch of settings that CCK can change (as a full plugin that does it on the fly) that are either unavailable through normal config.

I did at one point manage to find an enormouse list of available options but lost it during one of my many config attempts (doh!), if I locate it again I will post.
I started here though.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Enterprise_deployment

In the end CCK worked better for our needs so I reverted back to that (I think I got stuck on trying to make the bookmarks tool bar always visible and ran out of time).

Always used the mozilla.cfg and supporting files to set Firefox prefs. Personally haven't had a need to move to CCK.

You sure the CCK doesn't work with 39? Do you have CCK 2.1.1?

@sean I am actually considering moving away from CCK because I like to pass out just pieces of the config as required and got most of the way there the last time I looked.
I don't suppose you happened to set the bookmarks toolbar to display by default and have the entry and file you put it in available?

Sorry no. Default homepage, lock updates and a couple of other bits. However, if you type about:config into the URL bar you can see any settings that have been set and use this info to work out what you require.