Macs and Firefox Proxy settings

[PeteM]

Hi

We have some Macs running Leopard (on our Win2003 domain) and are trying to set the proxy for all users in Firefox 3.5.

I've read this thread http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/9026-firefox-macs.html and have overwritten the prefs.js in the Firefox.app folder with the one from my profile but this doesn't work. The file shows the correct proxy/homepage settings but each time a user logs on they have to set the proxy manually again.

Is there an easy way to get Firefox to retain the proxy and homepage settings for each user that logs on to the Macs without them having to constantly set them manually?

Thanks

 

Pete

[soveryapt]

You can set Firefox to use the system proxy details, I think if you do that once then it does it across the board from my experiences on my own MacBook ..

[tom_newton]

DHCP option 252?

[Arthur]

This may help...

 

http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/firefox-default-settings-revisited/

[Arthur]

Using the above article as a reference, this is what I have come up with.

 

Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/pref/local-settings.js

// Additions
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0);
pref("general.config.filename", "firefox.cfg");

 

Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox.cfg

// This file sets some default prefs and locks down some other prefs.

// Proxy
pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://intranet/proxy.pac");
pref("network.proxy.type", 2);

// Application Updates
lockPref("app.update.enabled", false);
lockPref("app.update.autoUpdateEnabled", false);
lockPref("extensions.update.autoUpdate", false);
lockPref("extensions.update.enabled", false);
lockPref("browser.search.update", false);

// Password Manager
pref("signon.rememberSignons", false);

// Default browser check
pref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", false);

// Home page
lockPref("browser.startup.page", 1);
lockPref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://www.google.co.uk/");

 

N.B. If you do not already use a proxy.pac file, then you can set the proxy manually using these settings instead of the ones shown above...

// Proxy
lockPref("network.proxy.type", 1);
lockPref("network.proxy.http", "proxy.embc.uk.com");
lockPref("network.proxy.http_port", 80);
lockPref("network.proxy.ssl", "proxy.embc.uk.com");
lockPref("network.proxy.ssl_port", 80);
lockPref("network.proxy.ftp", "proxy.embc.uk.com");
lockPref("network.proxy.ftp_port", 80);
lockPref("network.proxy.no_proxies_on", "localhost, 127.0.0.1, 10.0.0.0/22, 192.168.0.0/24, *.embc.uk.com");
lockPref("network.proxy.share_proxy_settings", true);

[PeteM]

Thanks Arthur-I'll check the info you posted out today

[PeteM]

Yup works a treat Arthur-thanks for your help

[Arthur]

Excellent news! I'll have to try it myself with our Mac's now.

[PeteM]

1 thing we've just discovered. You need to change the permissions on 2 files for this to all work.

 

firefox.cfg which resides in Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS and local-settings.js which resides in Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/pref.

 

They need the file permissions (chmod) amended to 777 according to my tech or the changes don't get picked up for other users.