Firefox 20 - how to lock https and ssl proxy settings
I am locking down proxy settings on my system (Linux Ubuntu 10.04). I have multiple users on my system, so I have an overall settings file /etc/firefox/pref/firefox.js.
In there I have settings as follows:
lockPref("network.proxy.http", "w.x.y.z"); lockPref("network.proxy.http_port", 800); lockPref("network.proxy.https", "w.x.y.z"); lockPref("network.proxy.https_port", 800);
This has been working fine with Firefox 17, 18 (even though there were some hiccups). After the recent update to Firefox 19 and 20, I noticed that some users could get to HTTPS sites without the proxy, i.e. the proxy settings were not being honored for https, while they did get honored for the regular http sites. Looking into about:config, the proxy settings were all there. Looking from the menu in the GUI of a user, Edit - Preferences - Network - Settings, the 2nd line of the proxy settings now says "SSL proxy". Instead of HTTPS proxy. And it was empty. Full reinstall and everything did not help anything.
It seems that the HTTPS proxy settings via the LockPref() function just don't do anything. Firefox knows about it but it has renamed https to ssl now??? What is supposed to be the difference there? Concerning web browsing, SSL and HTTPS are sort of interchangeable terms. They aren't generally, but on web browsing they are so for Firefox they should be the same.
Now, I noticed that there is now also a setting for ssl proxy, so I put:
lockPref("network.proxy.ssl", "w.x.y.z"); lockPref("network.proxy.ssl_port", 800);
And voila - suddenly the https sites do get routed properly via the proxy, and the 2nd line in the GUI settings dialog shows the proxy address properly as it should.
Can someone shed some light on this - is that just some generated confusion, or will the https setting be removed and replaced by SSL in the future, or what is the deal here?
All Replies (4)
hello, i think the relevant preference in the firefox configuration that is affecting this has always been called network.proxy.ssl.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Preferences/Mozilla_networking_preferences
You can lock this pref to true if you want to use the proxy for all protocols.
- network.proxy.share_proxy_settings
Thanks for the reference document, this is helpful.
Interestingly, this doc does not even mention the "network.proxy.https" setting, yet it has been honored, and is contained in several tutorials, in earlier versions. Also the about:config page shows this setting - and it shows that property as set, exactly as I specified it in my lockPref file. Just it did not bother to do anything with that setting. So I guess it's just a programmer's oversight?
Thanks for this info, and while I did know that, it was not useful for me as I do not want to lock any other protocol besides http and https. I did not say so in my original post - you are right on that.