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Enabling studies didn't help!

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  • Last reply by Pj

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I have Windows Firefox 66.03.

Enabled Studies, and had "hotfix-reset-xpi-verification-timestamp-1548973" in "active" status. But I didn't have the second study! Nothing happened for few hours! So I tried to disable Studies and enable them again. After that the first Study became "completed" and no "active". The second is still absent. What should I do?? How to get the required Study and fix the problem? Can you help me please??

I have Windows Firefox 66.03. Enabled Studies, and had "hotfix-reset-xpi-verification-timestamp-1548973" in "active" status. But I didn't have the second study! Nothing happened for few hours! So I tried to disable Studies and enable them again. After that the first Study became "completed" and no "active". The second is still absent. What should I do?? How to get the required Study and fix the problem? Can you help me please??

All Replies (11)

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Andrey1404 said

Why can't you apply a simple solution as a temporary measure until a full patch is released? Disable certificate verification or roll back the date/certificate on your own servers? Just to make it work right now in some kind of temporary way.

The easiest way right now is to install this "hot-fix" extension to get the fix that Mozilla has done.

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the-edmeister said

The easiest way right now is to install this "hot-fix" extension to get the fix that Mozilla has done.

I used a similar link and my problem was solved. However, the question arises, why such a link was not laid out by the developers themselves? People are forced to wait for some random "study" instead of using this method quickly and manually.

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So ...

Now the last hours the blog was updated and says literally "don't try anything by yourself exept studies" - well; hotfix-update-xpi-intermediate@mozilla.com-1.0.2-signed.xpi seems to be the only thing that gives my ff an usable state again.

Anyone an idea if those "nearly" official workarrounds will be a problem on the hopefully working again 66.0.4 (whenever released)? %-|


BTW: McCoy said

This was caused by an unforeseen technical problem .......

Unforeseen? Validity of a certificate ... a pre-set timeframe "Valid from" & "Expiration date"! Seriously; Unforeseen?

  • sigh*
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Bad part I would guess 80% of users are not going to feel comfortable or shouldn't attempt some of these temporary fixes- many users just don't mess around. Then again they most likely just use what comes on their computer and don't load anything that didn't come with Windows.

It does kind of piss me off that I did an image restore and then after that didn't work restore an old profile, then when that didn't work did a Google search. I was thinking malware!

I don't know why, but this really caused more problrms than just addons not working, FF was slow as a turtle and cache was filling up like crazy? It just wasn't usable! All I have is NoScripts, flagfox, tab reloader and undo close tab. If those addons weren't working, FF still should have responded and worked. When I would close FF it would take several minutes and cache would be around 500,000,000 plus in size. Anyway it stopped messing up now with temp fix.

Agree with someone, put out a fix with certificate and not other fixes that are in the works. That would be the customer service way of doing things, the other fixes could wait. I understand their thinking, but it wrong. I know as I did almost 40 years working on system software on mainframes before retirement.

Modified by Jer

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There was a Bug-A-Boo with a Certificate Expiration Date dealing with the Add-ons. There's a new FF Version with the main Fix, 66.0.4.

Mozilla Blog Post Update:
A Firefox release has been pushed — version 66.0.4 on Desktop and Android, and version 60.6.2 for ESR. This release repairs the certificate chain to re-enable web extensions, themes, search engines, and language packs that had been disabled (Bug 1549061).
There are remaining issues that we are actively working to resolve, but we wanted to get this fix out before Monday to lessen the impact of disabled add-ons before the start of the week. More information about the remaining issues can be found by clicking on the links to the release notes above.
(May 5, 16:25 EDT)


~Pj

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I have studies enabled and have left the browser running for 48 hours straight, nothing has come across. I run FF 56 as I have legacy plug ins I still need. However, when I go into about config the studies like seems backwards. To participate opt out is true, to not participate, opt out is false. When I toggle the check box the line changes. Here is what it says when studies is enabled: app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled;true

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the-edmeister said

Andrey1404 said
Why can't you apply a simple solution as a temporary measure until a full patch is released? Disable certificate verification or roll back the date/certificate on your own servers? Just to make it work right now in some kind of temporary way.

The easiest way right now is to install this "hot-fix" extension to get the fix that Mozilla has done.


How do I run this? I get an error that Firefox has blocked a site from trying to install an addon. I tried disabling various settings in security settings.

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Misterkrawk said

I have studies enabled and have left the browser running for 48 hours straight, nothing has come across. I run FF 56 as I have legacy plug ins I still need.

Other users have reported Firefox 56 isn't compatible with the study or the extension it installs.

It is not yet known whether Mozilla will release a different hotfix for unsupported versions of Firefox. If you need immediate release, you could seek out a workaround.

As you may have read, a certificate Firefox needs to verify extension signatures expired, which means most extensions fail the test and are disabled. You need to get the new certificate into your Firefox to solve this problem.

One **unofficial** and **unsupported** method can be found in this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bkspmk/addons_fix_for_5602_older/

or here:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1258165#answer-1218833

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jscher2000 said

Misterkrawk said
One **unofficial** and **unsupported** method can be found in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bkspmk/addons_fix_for_5602_older/ or here: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1258165#answer-1218833

The 1st link helped me a lot, thanks. Why can't Mozilla release such a fix as that rather than trying to overtake the plumbing? They could have easily even done it as a self-patching program rather than making a PEM file.

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Misterkrawk said

Why can't Mozilla release such a fix as that rather than trying to overtake the plumbing? They could have easily even done it as a self-patching program rather than making a PEM file.

Hi Misterkrawk, the developers are working on an extension to add the certificate to older versions of Firefox (pre-Firefox 60) but it isn't working so far.

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Misterkrawk said

I run FF 56 as I have legacy plug-ins I still need...


Additional Info: From Mozilla Blog:


Updates – Last Updated: 19:28 EDT May 8 2019

We’ve released Firefox 66.0.5 for Desktop and Android, and Firefox ESR 60.6.3, which include the permanent fix for re-enabling add-ons that were disabled starting on May 3rd. The initial, temporary fix that was deployed May 4th through the Studies system is replaced by these updates, and we recommend updating as soon as possible. Users who enabled Studies to receive the temporary fix, and have updated to the permanent fix, can now disable Studies if they desire.

For users who cannot update to the latest version of Firefox or Firefox ESR, we plan to distribute an update that automatically applies the fix to versions 52 through 60. This fix will also be available as a user-installable extension. For anyone still experiencing issues in versions 61 through 65, we plan to distribute a fix through a user-installable extension. These extensions will not require users to enable Studies, and we’ll provide an update when they are available.



"Updates – Last Updated: 11:51 EDT May 8 2019

Firefox 66.0.5 has been released, and we recommend that people update to that version if they continue to experience problems with extensions being disabled. You’ll get an update notification within 24 hours, or you can initiate an update manually.
An update to ESR 60.6.3 is also available as of May 8th. We’re continuing to work on a fix for older versions of Firefox, and will update this post and on social media as we have more information."



~Pj

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