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How does Firefox determine the Firefox GPOs are in place, superceding policies.json?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Within our environment, we've got a bunch of very old GPOs. However, we do not have the Firefox policy templates imported or enabled. With a customized Firefox deployment that includes both autoconfig and policies.json, settings and policies apply fine on a test system that's off the domain, but within the domain, it's almost as if the policies.json are ignored altogether.

How does Firefox determine to supercede the policies.json file? Does it simply look for active GPOs with Firefox in the name, and if so, skip applying policies by json?

Within our environment, we've got a bunch of very old GPOs. However, we do not have the Firefox policy templates imported or enabled. With a customized Firefox deployment that includes both autoconfig and policies.json, settings and policies apply fine on a test system that's off the domain, but within the domain, it's almost as if the policies.json are ignored altogether. How does Firefox determine to supercede the policies.json file? Does it simply look for active GPOs with Firefox in the name, and if so, skip applying policies by json?

Chosen solution

cor-el said

Did you look for a X:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions directory? Also check:
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox

Hi cor-el, Checked PolicyDefinitions, but firefox.admx and mozilla.admx are both nonexistant. I did see something within HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla, but after deleting, reinstalling Firefox with policies.json, then creating a new test profile, same issue. Any other ideas?

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Did you look for a X:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions directory?

Also check:

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox
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Seçilmiş Həll

cor-el said

Did you look for a X:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions directory? Also check:
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox

Hi cor-el, Checked PolicyDefinitions, but firefox.admx and mozilla.admx are both nonexistant. I did see something within HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla, but after deleting, reinstalling Firefox with policies.json, then creating a new test profile, same issue. Any other ideas?

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Figured out what's happening. Since one of our test systems was finding regkeys in HKLM\Software\Policies\Mozilla, that led me to believe while we don't have the new Firefox policy templates imported into our environment, we might have some stale GPOs pushing regkeys, since they didn't fall under the format of the new stuff.

Dug a bit, and found that someone had nested within a GPO an entry to add a handful of various registry key values into that area, causing the policies.json from working properly.

Thanks for the help, cor-el!

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You're welcome and glad to read you found what was wrong.