[Mozilla Enterprise] FF62+ Autoconfig sandbox changes (was Re: Firefox 62 Policy Template Updates Available)

Tue Sep 11 17:04:11 UTC 2018

I think a CCK2  some sort of GUI for cross platform configurations would 
be helpful. A Converter if you've already got a working CCK2 would be 
helpful, even if you're only Windows. Re-making the whole configuration, 
only for Windows, in GPO is kind of a PITA and step backwards.

--
James Pulver
CLASSE Computer Group
Cornell University

On 09/10/2018 04:08 PM, Mike Kaply wrote:
> I totally understand how you feel. Considering I'm the one that 
> encouraged so many people to use Autoconfig and I'm the one that's now 
> in the process of sandboxing it, I have very mixed emotions.
> 
> But to answer your questions.
> 
> 1. dump will not go away. I didn't think to document because it's always 
> available in and sandboxed environment in Firefox (It's not Autoconfig 
> specific)
> 
> 2. I am open to adding additional APIs to Autoconfig to make things 
> easier. So far I've had a console API requested. Adding a better alert 
> API sounds like a great idea (I hate that existing dialog).
> 
> 3. I'm not sure how to handle the dynamic configuration thing in policy. 
> One thing we've discussed is allowing the policy object to be generated 
> in Autoconfig and then be passed to the policy engine. This would allow 
> custom environment specific things in the policy.
> 
> I'm confused as to why you saw the dialog at all though. The way it's 
> supposed to work is that if the sandbox is enabled and you access 
> Components.classes, there's an error to the console about the sandbox 
> deprecation. That dialog should be much rarer now.
> 
> Side note, if anyone has any other thoughts on how to make this 
> transition easier, I'm open to any suggestions.
> 
> Mike Kaply
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 1:36 PM, Stephen Dowdy <sdowdy at ucar.edu 
> <mailto:sdowdy at ucar.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     So, this isn't about Policy Templates, but more about the slow
>     whittling down on Autoconfig.
>     (i.e. static policy doesn't work for dynamic programmatic
>     configuration/notifications)
> 
>     Summary:
>        - Debugging of "Gee, Sorry, an error occurred somewhere, contact
>     your system administrator" for sysadmins is painful if we don't have
>     good tools to instrument debugging in the Autoconfig setup.
>        - can we at least keep "dump()" as a supported Autoconfig
>     function, please?
>          (risking that you go "oh, yeah, we forgot to remove dump() too,
>     thanks!" on my asking this)
> 
>     Just got hit by the:
> 
>          Netscape.cfg/AutoConfig failed. Please contact your system
>     administrator.
>          Error: mozilla.cfg error occurred:  failed: ReferenceError:
>     Components is not defined
> 
>     issue from doing stuff like:
> 
>          Components.utils.import("resource://gre/modules/Services.jsm");
>          var moz_debug=( getenv("RAL_MOZ_DEBUG") == 1 );
>          ...
>          if ( moz_debug ) { Services.prompt.alert(null, "RAL DEBUG",
>     "Hello from mozilla.cfg"); }
> 
>     Okay, so fine, i can use 'displayError()' according to
> 
>     https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig
>     <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig>
> 
>     But the dialog template generates some horrifically ugly output for
>     just doing debug or simple alert messages to users:
> 
>         Netscape.cfg/AutoConfig failed. Please contact your system
>     administrator.
>         Error: [funcname] failed: [message]
> 
>     In other words, it simply does not handle a generic user interface
>     for notifications/diagnostics.
> 
>     So, while the Release Notes state that the sandboxing will only
>     support the functions in official Doc page, i note that it still
>     supports:
>         dump()
>     which is not listed.
> 
>     I have a routine/mechanism in mozilla.cfg to ignore pref settings
>     (again mostly for debugging):
> 
>          // If we get ignprefs, then redefine defaultPref() and friends
>     to just dump() what WOULD have been done, ignoring Prefs settings
>          if ( moz_ignprefs ) {
>              function defaultPref(pref,value) {
>                dump("RAL_MOZ_IGNPREFS: Ignore defaultPref(\""+pref+"\",
>     "+value+");\n");
>          //      for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++)
>          //        dump(arguments[i]);
>              }
>          }
> 
>     So 'dump()' is still working to write to STDERR, hoorah.   Can you
>     guys PLEASE keep that functionality in Autoconfig so sysadmins can
>     have some means to debug what is going on in mozilla.cfg when the
>     user just gets "Aw, sucks to be you (and your sysadmin, too)!" type
>     dialogs?
> 
>     thanks,
>     --stephen
> 
>     -- 
>     Stephen Dowdy  -  Systems Administrator  -  NCAR/RAL
>     303.497.2869   - sdowdy at ucar.edu <mailto:sdowdy at ucar.edu>        -
>     http://www.ral.ucar.edu/~sdowdy/ <http://www.ral.ucar.edu/%7Esdowdy/>
> 
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