firefox crippled again
Sun Apr 23 22:09:29 EDT 2017
I seem to have had a Firefox update this weekend, and now it no longer loads local-file HTML pages. I was misled in the diganosis by another Linux browser also failing to load the files. lynx still loads them successfully. Firefox could load them again after I restarted it in safe mode. This probably means some Firefox Add-On is the problem. I have a lot of Add-Ons installed, so it may take a lot of trial-and-error restarts to identify the broken one. ☹
46 add-ons active. There are 2 add-ons to list add-ons, but apparently neither works. Being able to grab a list of what add-ons are installed and which are enabled would save a lot of typing here.... Disabling:
ContextCalc
Deepest Sender
Firebug
InfoLister (could not be verified)
Memory Restart
Open Tag Count
Quick Calculator
Sage
Tin Eye Reverse Image Search
X-Ray
Restarted Firefox. Still no local pages. Disabling:
about:addons-memory
Addon List Dumper
AntiDesigner
CanvasBlocker
Classic Theme Restorer
Clippings
Copy URLs Expert
Edit Bookmark Plus
Enable Tracking Protection
Restarted Firefox. Still no local pages. Disabling:
Extension List Dumper
Forecastfox
Ghostery
Gmail Manager
Google search link fix
Lazarus: Form Recovery
Make Link
MM3-ProxySwitch
Restarted Firefox. Still no local pages. Disabling:
Navigate Up
NoScript
Nuke Anything Enhanced
Remove It Permanently
RequestPolicy
SaveSel
Scientific Calculator
Searchbar Autosizer
Restarted Firefox. Local pages load again. Also, X-notifier add-on thinks it was just installed. This used to let me know when I had new email waiting, but it hasn't been working for a while. So I guess I re-enable half of those last 8, and see what happens.
Enabling:
RequestPolicy
SaveSel
Scientific Calculator
Searchbar Autosizer
Restarted Firefox. Local pages still work. Enabling:
Nuke Anything Enhanced
Remove It Permanently
Restarted Firefox. Local pages still work. Enabling:
Navigate Up
NoScript
Restarted Firefox. Local pages broken again. Disabling:
NoScript
Restarted Firefox. Local pages load again. This is bad, because NoScript is critical. Hopefully there's some (new) configuration setting that's blocking local pages, and can be adjusted.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/807382
How can I disable local file access security check?I have the NoScript extension installed. When I looked in about:config, I found an entry called:
noscript.allowLocalLinks
When I toggled this to "true," I was able to navigate via URLs to local and networked files. When I looked it up, I found out that you can set this switch using the NoScript UI (Options|Advanced|Trusted).
I already have this switch set.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_to_local_pages_do_not_workFor security purposes, Mozilla applications block links to local files (and directories) from remote files. This includes linking to files on your hard drive, on mapped network drives, and accessible via Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) paths. This prevents a number of unpleasant possibilities....
Why have I not seen this problem before if "This page was last modified 16:56, 19 July 2016"?Note: If you are using the NoScript extension, ... it is possible to allow local links (file://) in your NoScript Options ("Advanced -> Trusted -> "Allow local links").
As mentioned, I already had this set.
The https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/locallink/ LocalLink extension allows overriding the security check per click: links to local pages can be followed using the context menu for the link.Installed the LocalLink add-on: Open local URLs ("file://") from any webpage.
Re-enabled NoScript.
Restarted Firefox. The "locallink" add-on did not fix the problem; local pages still do not load.
Disabling:
locallink
Enabling:
about:addons-memory
Addon List Dumper
CanvasBlocker
Classic Theme Restorer
Clippings
Copy URLs Expert
Edit Bookmark Plus
Enable Tracking Protection
Restarted Firefox. Local pages still did not load. For no good reason, I reversed the "Allow local links" setting in NoScript, i.e. disabled it. Local pages load. I think this must be a new bug in NoScript. This has taken up my whole evening. I was going to make some minor changes on a web page, but I needed to be able to load and view the page. I need to load pages from local disk to check them before they're copied to my web server. (Lynx, which was loading the local pages, is a text-only browser.)
I'm going to re-enable the other add-ons (minus the ones I haven't been using):
Forecastfox
Ghostery
Gmail Manager
Google search link fix
InfoLister
Lazarus: Form Recovery
Make Link
MM3-ProxySwitch
Open Tab Count
I guess that other browser (named "Browser") is blocking local files as a security measure. I don't think I'd ever tried to read local files with it until I was using it as a sanity check against Firefox today. There's nothing in its settings to disable this "feature". ☹
Monday 11:17
Firefox has been unresponsive for half an hour. My primary Comcast email account was finally moved from the terrible "Zimbra" email to the "new" Xfinity email Saturday (my secondary account was moved months ago), and their new app/Java may be more than this little laptop can run (with 300+ other browser tabs open).
Firefox sometimes tells me that some script is consuming excessive resources, but when that happens, there's generally not enough resources left for Firefox to detect and report the problem for quite a while. And as I mentioned before, Firefox doesn't provide a means of reporting resource use by tab/page, so there's no non-arcana-expert way to find out what page(s) you never want to visit again.
Monday 13:26
I checked my GMail. I don't do that often. I found a Twitter follow request. I didn't remember creating a Twitter account. (@fmlast; substitute with my first, middle, and last inits/names.) So now I have a follower. There was an earlier follow request sitting there too; I don't recognize @_switcha from his photo, and based on his tweets I don't want to follow him, and I don't feel comfortable with a total stranger following me. Not that I've made any tweets since I created the account in Nov 2012.
I also found more email addressed to f.last@gmail.com. (I always use flast@gmail.com or fmlast@gmail.com; I did not give anyone my address in this form.) Most was from a PetCo loyalty program that I've tried to unsubscribe from before. Perhaps "Brian" resubscribed my address. I learned his name when I phoned PetCo to unsubscribe this time. Same email address was also used to create a Spotify account. I have the same flast@comcast.net problem.
There's a lot of people out there who don't know their own email addresses. Many of them will re-submit my @ddress after I un-subscribe it. Too many sites do not verify @ddresses when they are submitted. And besides my annoyance of receiving email for things I'm not interested in (U.K. home grocery delivery, car maintenance in Arkansas, Salvation Army donations in Alaska, etc), the organizations that have subscribed/enrolled these people do not have an email address for contacting them. Sometimes they have a phone number or physical address (e.g. home grocery delivery), but often the incorrect @ddress is all they've got.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/884309.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
I seem to have had a Firefox update this weekend, and now it no longer loads local-file HTML pages. I was misled in the diganosis by another Linux browser also failing to load the files. lynx still loads them successfully. Firefox could load them again after I restarted it in safe mode. This probably means some Firefox Add-On is the problem. I have a lot of Add-Ons installed, so it may take a lot of trial-and-error restarts to identify the broken one. ☹
46 add-ons active. There are 2 add-ons to list add-ons, but apparently neither works. Being able to grab a list of what add-ons are installed and which are enabled would save a lot of typing here.... Disabling:
ContextCalc
Deepest Sender
Firebug
InfoLister (could not be verified)
Memory Restart
Open Tag Count
Quick Calculator
Sage
Tin Eye Reverse Image Search
X-Ray
Restarted Firefox. Still no local pages. Disabling:
about:addons-memory
Addon List Dumper
AntiDesigner
CanvasBlocker
Classic Theme Restorer
Clippings
Copy URLs Expert
Edit Bookmark Plus
Enable Tracking Protection
Restarted Firefox. Still no local pages. Disabling:
Extension List Dumper
Forecastfox
Ghostery
Gmail Manager
Google search link fix
Lazarus: Form Recovery
Make Link
MM3-ProxySwitch
Restarted Firefox. Still no local pages. Disabling:
Navigate Up
NoScript
Nuke Anything Enhanced
Remove It Permanently
RequestPolicy
SaveSel
Scientific Calculator
Searchbar Autosizer
Restarted Firefox. Local pages load again. Also, X-notifier add-on thinks it was just installed. This used to let me know when I had new email waiting, but it hasn't been working for a while. So I guess I re-enable half of those last 8, and see what happens.
Enabling:
RequestPolicy
SaveSel
Scientific Calculator
Searchbar Autosizer
Restarted Firefox. Local pages still work. Enabling:
Nuke Anything Enhanced
Remove It Permanently
Restarted Firefox. Local pages still work. Enabling:
Navigate Up
NoScript
Restarted Firefox. Local pages broken again. Disabling:
NoScript
Restarted Firefox. Local pages load again. This is bad, because NoScript is critical. Hopefully there's some (new) configuration setting that's blocking local pages, and can be adjusted.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/807382
How can I disable local file access security check?I have the NoScript extension installed. When I looked in about:config, I found an entry called:
noscript.allowLocalLinks
When I toggled this to "true," I was able to navigate via URLs to local and networked files. When I looked it up, I found out that you can set this switch using the NoScript UI (Options|Advanced|Trusted).
I already have this switch set.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_to_local_pages_do_not_workFor security purposes, Mozilla applications block links to local files (and directories) from remote files. This includes linking to files on your hard drive, on mapped network drives, and accessible via Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) paths. This prevents a number of unpleasant possibilities....
Why have I not seen this problem before if "This page was last modified 16:56, 19 July 2016"?Note: If you are using the NoScript extension, ... it is possible to allow local links (file://) in your NoScript Options ("Advanced -> Trusted -> "Allow local links").
As mentioned, I already had this set.
The https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/locallink/ LocalLink extension allows overriding the security check per click: links to local pages can be followed using the context menu for the link.Installed the LocalLink add-on: Open local URLs ("file://") from any webpage.
Re-enabled NoScript.
Restarted Firefox. The "locallink" add-on did not fix the problem; local pages still do not load.
Disabling:
locallink
Enabling:
about:addons-memory
Addon List Dumper
CanvasBlocker
Classic Theme Restorer
Clippings
Copy URLs Expert
Edit Bookmark Plus
Enable Tracking Protection
Restarted Firefox. Local pages still did not load. For no good reason, I reversed the "Allow local links" setting in NoScript, i.e. disabled it. Local pages load. I think this must be a new bug in NoScript. This has taken up my whole evening. I was going to make some minor changes on a web page, but I needed to be able to load and view the page. I need to load pages from local disk to check them before they're copied to my web server. (Lynx, which was loading the local pages, is a text-only browser.)
I'm going to re-enable the other add-ons (minus the ones I haven't been using):
Forecastfox
Ghostery
Gmail Manager
Google search link fix
InfoLister
Lazarus: Form Recovery
Make Link
MM3-ProxySwitch
Open Tab Count
I guess that other browser (named "Browser") is blocking local files as a security measure. I don't think I'd ever tried to read local files with it until I was using it as a sanity check against Firefox today. There's nothing in its settings to disable this "feature". ☹
Monday 11:17
Firefox has been unresponsive for half an hour. My primary Comcast email account was finally moved from the terrible "Zimbra" email to the "new" Xfinity email Saturday (my secondary account was moved months ago), and their new app/Java may be more than this little laptop can run (with 300+ other browser tabs open).
Firefox sometimes tells me that some script is consuming excessive resources, but when that happens, there's generally not enough resources left for Firefox to detect and report the problem for quite a while. And as I mentioned before, Firefox doesn't provide a means of reporting resource use by tab/page, so there's no non-arcana-expert way to find out what page(s) you never want to visit again.
Monday 13:26
I checked my GMail. I don't do that often. I found a Twitter follow request. I didn't remember creating a Twitter account. (@fmlast; substitute with my first, middle, and last inits/names.) So now I have a follower. There was an earlier follow request sitting there too; I don't recognize @_switcha from his photo, and based on his tweets I don't want to follow him, and I don't feel comfortable with a total stranger following me. Not that I've made any tweets since I created the account in Nov 2012.
I also found more email addressed to f.last@gmail.com. (I always use flast@gmail.com or fmlast@gmail.com; I did not give anyone my address in this form.) Most was from a PetCo loyalty program that I've tried to unsubscribe from before. Perhaps "Brian" resubscribed my address. I learned his name when I phoned PetCo to unsubscribe this time. Same email address was also used to create a Spotify account. I have the same flast@comcast.net problem.
There's a lot of people out there who don't know their own email addresses. Many of them will re-submit my @ddress after I un-subscribe it. Too many sites do not verify @ddresses when they are submitted. And besides my annoyance of receiving email for things I'm not interested in (U.K. home grocery delivery, car maintenance in Arkansas, Salvation Army donations in Alaska, etc), the organizations that have subscribed/enrolled these people do not have an email address for contacting them. Sometimes they have a phone number or physical address (e.g. home grocery delivery), but often the incorrect @ddress is all they've got.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/884309.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]