[ubuntu-uk] Locking down Firefox settings

[Rob Beard]

On 30/01/2009 13:48, Alistair Crust wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 17:44 +0000, Rob Beard wrote:
>    
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I was wondering if anyone knew how to lock down the settings on Firefox
>> on Ubuntu 8.04?
>>
>> Basically I'm nearly done setting up an LTSP Server and I want to make
>> sure that no one who logs on can fiddle with the settings.  I've got
>> Tinyproxy and Dansguardian installed and working but only if I manually
>> specify the proxy settings.  I found something about entering some
>> settings in /usr/lib/firefox/firefox.cfg which I have entered (details
>> here: http://m.linuxjournal.com/article/9044) but I'm finding I can
>> enable and disable the Firefox proxy settings and alter the rest of the
>> settings as I please.
>>
>> I did try Firehol to force the proxy transparently but it stopped the
>> LTSP clients from booting unless I enabled a whole lot of ports on the
>> Firehol configuration (I got so far but got stuck on the nbd ports).
>>
>> Just wondering if anyone knows how to do this?
>>
>> Ta,
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>
>>      
> Hi Rob,
>
> I recall seeing a posting within the last 2/3 months on either the
> ltsp-discuss mailing list or the edubuntu-users list that give you
> instructions on how to lock firefox down.
>
> If I remember correctly you can do it by placing the values you want to
> lock in a text file, encoding it using Rot13 and specifying some global
> settings that force Firefox to read that file (It greys out all the
> options for the user, so the user can't change anything or add their own
> settings in their ~./mozilla/firefox/*)
>
> I've used this method successfully in school and at our boarding house,
> I just cant remember the specifics off the top of my head.
>
> If your still stuck next week drop me a line and I'll see if I can dig
> the mails out for you.
>
> Kind regards
> Alistair
>
> Please email first, I may not be in my office and available for calls
>    
Thanks Alistair, I'll do a bit more digging.

Ta,

Rob