Firefox 2.0 package issues...

KrakaJap · ‎Oct 27, 2006

I repackaged Firefox 2.0 for a campus-wide deployment... everything seems to work fine except for one little issue:

When Firefox is ran for the first time (after each reboot) it runs through an installation process... the package is deployed through policy and is installed as soon as the machine is loaded (and Firefox is not currently installed). After the first run (as long as you don't reboot the machine) it no longer runs the installation before opening Firefox.

Not sure why this is happening... the first package I built was with Installation Monitoring... so I tried the Snapshot method next and still have this issue. Standard lab machines have a mandatory profile and I've placed all the Application Data into this profile (this solved an issue I had with Firefox not loading all the plugins and Bookmarks). The policy is "Assigned" and not "Applied" or "Published" which of course is what I should be doing to force an installation of an application rather than giving the user a choice. The signatures of the installation on the clients and the original msi are identical so the application should not be trying to self-heal.

I'm pretty much at a loss... any ideas?

patrikb · ‎Nov 14, 2006

Just a little piece of advice; don't repackage Firefox, but use the redistributable msi from Frontmotion, and the downloadable .adm-files through GPO.

http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/fmfirefox.htm

KrakaJap · ‎Nov 17, 2006

Well I would if it weren't for two reasons...

1. it's branded with a third party logo
2. superiors say no 🙂

Any other ideas?

Cary_R · ‎Nov 17, 2006

KrakaJap wrote:
Well I would if it weren't for two reasons...

1. it's branded with a third party logo
2. superiors say no 🙂

Any other ideas?

You could use the AdminStudio Editor to change the branding...Or you could try repackaging 2.0 for Portable Firefox when it comes out--this is an easy repackage process:

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

KrakaJap · ‎Nov 20, 2006

Well my "repack" of 2.0 works fine aside from this little install process issue. There must be some sort of registry switch that starts or checks for this. I've even tried unlocking the standard lab profile, running this installation, and then locking the profile again. This for some reason did not work either. (I was hoping that it was a user setting that would get saved to the profile) But that's ok... I at least now know it has to be a file setting somewhere else on client machines or a registry setting of some sort.

EDIT: I figured it out... apparently the shortcut I was using is calling some sort of installation check before it runs firefox. I just removed this shortcut and created one manually and now everything works fine.

Cary_R · ‎Nov 20, 2006

Ah yes, it would have been an "Advertised" shortcut. That could certainly be an issue, as firefox has a tendency to update itself automatically.

When an Advertised Resource is called (i.e. a COM Class, Shortcut, File Extension) it checks the integrity of the application, which will then want to Un-upgrade firefox.