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With 250+ machines on our school network, is there a way to turn on "clear history when firefox closes" (cache setting only) by modifying a registry key or file?

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I need a way to turn ON the clearing of the cache programatically within a logon script. Kids are not clearing the cache and the roaming profiles on the Windows XP and Windows 7 machines are getting way too big to be moved across the network on every logon and logoff. Otherwise we will have to remove Firefox, which I do not want to do, nor do most of the people in the school :)

I need a way to turn ON the clearing of the cache programatically within a logon script. Kids are not clearing the cache and the roaming profiles on the Windows XP and Windows 7 machines are getting way too big to be moved across the network on every logon and logoff. Otherwise we will have to remove Firefox, which I do not want to do, nor do most of the people in the school :)

All Replies (3)

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There have been some threads here about large-scale deployment, but I don't know whether they would help after Firefox has been installed.

Random thought:

I suspect (but haven't checked) that changing the "Clear Recent History" options would add corresponding entries to prefs.js in the user's profile folder. (These usually are added during Firefox shut-down.) That's just a plain text file and you could append to it by a variety of means.

It might be possible to use a VBScript during logon to update that file before the user starts Firefox. The script would have to detect the random folder name(s) in order to make the update.

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You can do that via a mozilla.cfg file and either set a new default value or lock the pref if you do not want them to change the setting.

You can use these functions in mozilla.cfg:

defaultPref();  // set new default value
pref(); // set pref, but allow changes
lockPref();  // lock pref, disallow changes

See:


//
lockPref("privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown", true);
lockPref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.cache", true);

Modified by cor-el

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I will try these things on Wednesday and let you know how it worked out. Thanks!!!

Steve