Bug#979821: firefox-esr: Try to read policies.json from wrong directory

[Timo Poikola]

Package: firefox-esr
Version: 78.6.1esr-1~deb10u1
Severity: normal

Dear maintainer.

My firefox-esr is a little bit confused the correct location of "policies.json".
Mozilla's page https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/managing-policies-linux-desktops
says:
1. Create a file called policies.json with your policies.
2. Place this file in firefox/distribution where "firefox"
is the installation directory for Firefox. (This will
vary per distribution).
In the Debian, place is definetely under /etc. Firefox-esr's debian package
creates /etc/firefox-esr :
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ dpkg -L firefox-esr |grep etc
/etc
/etc/firefox-esr
/etc/firefox-esr/firefox-esr.js

but try to read policies.json from /etc/firefox:
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ grep "/etc/fi" firefox.strace
faccessat(AT_FDCWD, "/etc/firefox/policies/policies.json", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

and this is the problem, because it is not documented or it is not the directory created by
debian installer. And anyway, strace should not be a end user tool to find out location of
fundamendal configuration files.

My suggestion is:
1. Place this file to /etc/firefox-esr/polcies
2. Document it
3. (Optionally) Put into this policies.json
{"policies":{"DisableAppUpdate":true}}
because an end-user-program should not to try
update itself. It is matter of a package manager.

Thanks in advance

-- Package-specific info:


-- Addons package information

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.7
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: arm64 (aarch64)
Foreign Architectures: armhf

Kernel: Linux 5.10.5-v8+ (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_CRAP
Locale: LANG=en_DK, LC_CTYPE=en_DK (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages firefox-esr depends on:
ii debianutils 4.8.6.1
ii fontconfig 2.13.1-2
ii libatk1.0-0 2.30.0-2
ii libc6 2.28-10
ii libcairo-gobject2 1.16.0-4+rpt1
ii libcairo2 1.16.0-4+rpt1
ii libdbus-1-3 1.12.20-0+deb10u1
ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.110-4
ii libevent-2.1-6 2.1.8-stable-4
ii libffi6 3.2.1-9
ii libfontconfig1 2.13.1-2
ii libfreetype6 2.9.1-3+deb10u2
ii libgcc1 1:8.3.0-6
ii libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 2.38.1+dfsg-1
ii libglib2.0-0 2.58.3-2+deb10u2
ii libgtk-3-0 3.24.5-1+rpt2
ii libpango-1.0-0 1.42.4-8~deb10u1
ii libstdc++6 8.3.0-6
ii libx11-6 2:1.6.7-1+deb10u1
ii libx11-xcb1 2:1.6.7-1+deb10u1
ii libxcb-shm0 1.13.1-2
ii libxcb1 1.13.1-2
ii libxcomposite1 1:0.4.4-2
ii libxdamage1 1:1.1.4-3+b3
ii libxext6 2:1.3.3-1+b2
ii libxfixes3 1:5.0.3-1
ii libxrender1 1:0.9.10-1
ii procps 2:3.3.15-2
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.11.dfsg-1

Versions of packages firefox-esr recommends:
ii libavcodec58 7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1+rpt1

Versions of packages firefox-esr suggests:
pn fonts-lmodern <none>
pn fonts-stix | otf-stix <none>
ii libcanberra0 0.30-7
ii libgssapi-krb5-2 1.17-3+deb10u1
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.24.32-3+rpt1
ii pulseaudio 12.2-4+deb10u1+rpi3

-- no debconf information

[Arnaud Ferraris]

Package: firefox-esr
Version: 91.5.0esr-1
Followup-For: Bug #979821
X-Debbugs-Cc: arnaud....@gmail.com

Dear Maintainer,

I can confirm this issue is still present in the 91.x cycle.

The configuration dir for firefox-esr being /etc/firefox-esr,
the policies folder should be /etc/firefox-esr/policies, not
/etc/firefox/policies.

Best regards,
Arnaud

-- Package-specific info:


-- Addons package information

-- System Information:

Debian Release: bookworm/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (900, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.16.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set

Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages firefox-esr depends on:

ii debianutils 4.11.2
ii fontconfig 2.13.1-4.4
ii libatk1.0-0 2.36.0-3
ii libc6 2.33-5
ii libcairo-gobject2 1.16.0-5
ii libcairo2 1.16.0-5
ii libdbus-1-3 1.12.20-3
ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.112-2
ii libevent-2.1-7 2.1.12-stable-1
ii libffi8 3.4.2-4
ii libfontconfig1 2.13.1-4.4
ii libfreetype6 2.11.1+dfsg-1
ii libgcc-s1 11.2.0-16
ii libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 2.42.6+dfsg-2
ii libglib2.0-0 2.70.4-1
ii libgtk-3-0 3.24.31-1
ii libnspr4 2:4.32-3
ii libnss3 2:3.75-1
ii libpango-1.0-0 1.50.3+ds1-6
ii libstdc++6 11.2.0-16
ii libvpx7 1.11.0-2
ii libx11-6 2:1.7.2-2+b1
ii libx11-xcb1 2:1.7.2-2+b1
ii libxcb-shm0 1.14-3
ii libxcb1 1.14-3
ii libxcomposite1 1:0.4.5-1
ii libxdamage1 1:1.1.5-2
ii libxext6 2:1.3.4-1
ii libxfixes3 1:6.0.0-1
ii libxrender1 1:0.9.10-1
ii procps 2:3.3.17-6
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.11.dfsg-2

Versions of packages firefox-esr recommends:

ii libavcodec58 7:4.4.1-3

Versions of packages firefox-esr suggests:

ii fonts-lmodern 2.004.5-6.1
pn fonts-stix | otf-stix <none>
ii libcanberra0 0.30-8
ii libgssapi-krb5-2 1.18.3-7
ii pulseaudio 15.0+dfsg1-3

-- no debconf information