Rolling Out Mozilla in an Organization?

jdclucidly asks: "I am a network administrator for a small non-profit (about 50 employees). I would like to roll Mozilla 1.2.1 out to all of our desktops. We don't have a single ghost image because the computers on site are too varied. Yes, I did my Googling. The source for the installer is just huge and mind boggling. Is there something like a Mozilla Administration Kit that will generate custom Mozilla installers? If not, would people on Slashdot be interested in starting a new project to make such a kit?" If you were going to deploy a "branded" version of Mozilla, company-wide, how would you do it, especially if you had to worry about a mixed OS environment?

"Here's what I want to do:

• Install everything but Quality Feedback Agent
• Set Mozilla as the default browser
• Disable 'Open Unrequested Windows' (kill pop-ups)
• Install Elveraldo's Crystal-Classic theme as default
• Set Google as the default search engine
• Set 'Georgia' as the default Serif font for Western and Unicode
• Enable HTTP Pipelining
• Enable FIPS internal cryptography
• Set toolbar to 'Pictures only'
• Set Home Page to my organization's intranet site
• Set start page to 'Blank page'
• Disable 'Hide the tab bar'
• Enable Middle-click for new tab
• Enable control+enter for new tab
• Default downloads to 'open a progress dialog'
• Disable Javascript and Plugins for Mail & News
• Enable quicklaunch
• Create an additional shortcut on the desktop and in quicklaunch that uses chrome/icons/mailnew.ico as it's source and points to 'mozilla.exe -mail'

As you can imagine, doing this on 50 computers (and making sure I got each of these) would be quite tedious. Are, there others out there that want to do the same thing. I checked the Mozilla newgroups. I checked the CCK Project page at Mozilla.org -- it appears to be pretty inactive. I checked out the Netscape 7 CCK, which is pretty robust but doesn't do everything I want and it's proprietary -- plus, I don't want all the NS7 proprietary crap on my network.

I installed Mozilla on my machine using the stub installer and had it save all of the .XPI components to a folder. I went in and extracted the .XPI's and examined them. It seems possible to do these things but not without learning XUL, JavaScript, XML and Mozilla.org's own stuffings -- not to mention setting up a Visual C++/Cygwin compiling farm for every next Mozilla release. Can I:

• Directly modify the defaults/prefs/all.js file to incorporate my preference defaults above and then recompress the .XPI?
• Add to the installer Crystal-Classic.jar somehow? Where are those changes made?
• Make the installer NOT allow the user to change any of this?
• Make the installer create the above mentioned shortcut?"

Automate It

[adrox]

I recommend Automate [unisyn.com]. It would get the job done and can be deployed over a network. Although it'll only work on windows machines. Alternatively a cheaper solution would be to copy over all the mozilla files and registry settings to each machine.

Re:Don't use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoenix doesn't need to be installed either. Just put it on a network drive and get everyone to share it (with each computer running a script to use their their profile).

Unfortunately Phoenix nightlies have dropped the pretty theme that they had in 0.1 - 0.5. They have a new and ugly theme.

Uhh... this is what you DON'T want to do

[cscx]

This is 100% the wrong way to go about things, bud. What you want to do is use something like Microsoft Systems Management Server, [microsoft.com] Veritas WinInstall, [ondemandsoftware.com] or Novell ZenWorks SnAPPShot [novell.com] to monitor the install on your install test-bed PC (you DO have one, don't you?), make all those oodles of changes you want to, then redistribute it identically to your clients. If you don't have these, I would buy one of the packages -- the money you spend will save you $$$ in man-hours trying to come up with a hackneyed, crappy homebrew solution in the long run. Once you start using these distribution apps, they will become your next best friend.

Web Browser Kiosk Build-Experience

[VoidEngineer]

Ah, I used to do something similar at the Department of Networking Services & Information Technologies, at the University of Chicago, were I used to work. Setup up webkiosks and the like for the campus.

Your probably already know this, but I'll point out the obvious:

1. Set up a Ghost server for yourself. Maybe even look at a copy of Alteris LabExpert [altiris.com].

2. Backup often.

3. Set yourself a timeline with mile markers. Give yourself a few months, so you don't pull out your hair or have a mental break down. Plan a reasonable project timeline, such as 3 months.

4. Set up testing workstations. Get all of your networking issues out of the way before you start on Mozilla. TCP/IP or other protocol stacks should already be installed. All device drivers should already be installed.

5. Take the list which you've already made, and make the changes to the box. When you get the change to work, backup the box with your image server. Keep detailed notes of what you've just accomplished.

6. Repeat step 5 until all items are completed.

7. When step 6 is completed, backup the workstation, diff the image if needed, and push it onto workstations of similar hardware configuration. Either package the image as an application (tar, zip), an application image (ZenWorks, Active Directory resource, Ghost, etc), or an operating system image (SMS, Alteris, Ghost).

Once you get into the groove of the project, it'll go quickly.

Sorry for stating the obvious, but you're talking about a fairly complex network engineering task. Don't expect it to happen next week or even next month. Just make sure you have an imaging server and that you take good notes, and the project will go fine.

Re:just copy the directory

[SnowDeath]

Dont forget to copy the registry.dat when you copy Mozilla from Application data so that Mozilla knows where you are storing the Mozilla profile. As long as you are using 2000/XP (NT could work too, that's what I had have to use at work right now), just make all of your profile directories/files ready only *EXCEPT* the parent salted directory, they need read/delete to that for the lock file.

The way I have Mozilla set on our NT4 machines is to use the profile editor (name?), delete the default, create my own (named modlang, being that I run the modlang computer lab) profile, put it under mozilla.org in the program files directory, set everything to the way I want (popup blocking, default homepage, etc) and then simply copy mozilla.org directory (with mozilla already being installed on the profile creating machine) to each target machine.

The tricky part was figuring out that I needed to copy the registry.dat to default user's application data directory, after figuring that out it is cake.

Easier transition...

[hendridm]

I like Phoenix because I'm forced to switch between browsers a lot (thanks to my job). All the shortcut keys are similar between IE and Phoenix (unlike Mozilla). Alt-D puts me in the address bar (Ctrl-L in Moz), Shift-Click opens in a new window, and best of all, Ctrl-Enter in the address bar, as you said, works just like in IE. The consistency is handy if you use two different browser at the same time (like havign IE at home and Phoenix at work, as I imagine many of your employees will have).

Re:How about the Client Customization Kit?

[mike_sucks]

What part of the article didn't I address? Sure the Google bit was a duplication, but that's how I came acroos the CCK in the first place.

How about understanding what I posted? I find a brain works well for that sort of thing.

/mike

I was thinking of doing this

[digitalgimpus]

I was considering starting this as a project for Evanglelmoz (http://evangelmoz.mozdev.org).

CCK and other items

[GarfBond]

Don't ditch the Netscape 7 CCK so fast. It already does a lot of what you're looking to do, and it's not *that* bad. A lot of the Netscape 7 proprietary crap can be turned off while building with the CCK (ain't that nice?), for example, AOL On Desktop. It automagically sets the specified default home page, bookmarks, titlebar, mail/news settings, proxy settings, and others. If there's any reason to not use Netscape 7 (keeping in mind that AOD, Winamp, RP8, and HP plugin can all be turned off), it's because it uses the 1.0.1/1.0.2 codebase (a little dated but it does the job admirably). It should be noted that 7.0.1 uses 1.0.2 and has a nifty little PopUp manager (which isn't availble in Mozilla AFAIK). I am not aware if the 7.0 CCK allows you to use the 7.01 XPIs.

Most of the features can be edited with notepad in the prefs file, found in default/pref/all.js (and all-ns.js for Netscape builds). However, these are the few that I believe are not possible to change with those files:

• default homepage
• default browser
• Default Theme w/ Crystal
• Default Search Engine - Google
• default font (not sure)
• Quicklaunch (not sure about this one, see if something labeled "quicklaunch" is in the all.js file)
• Shortcut file

These are the items that I believe require some XUL knowledge in order for you to change them. And, if you read the Netscape 7 CCK license, you'll notice that Netscape does not allow you to change the default theme or Search Engine (mozilla.org does not have this restriction of course...Netscape has their own reasons for making this admittedly minor restriction). You'll notice that the default theme/search engine/homepage is referenced in the prefs.js as a chrome:// address.

To change your setup options, you'll need to edit the SETUP.INI (or is it CONFIG.INI? i don't remember) file found with the install files. Note that if you use Netscape 7's CCK, you'll need to do this to expose the Instant Messenger option (and then disable that), since Netscape 7 only allows you to select both Mail and IM, not either/or.

I would also advise against not installing QFA. It's what allows the Mozilla/Netscape developers to figure out why crashes are happening and what they can do to fix it. It truly is the least you can do to contribute back to the project.

You CAN unzip the XPIs, edit the files, and rezip them. For more information on this, consult the CCK documentation that Netscape produces (it's actually helpful in this case). Using Winzip, all you'll have to do is make sure that you preserve the directory structure (Winzip doesn't make it immediately clear how the directories within a ZIP are organized...Winrar is better at this), and then rename the resulting .ZIP file to .XPI. (PDF LINK [netscape.com])

Here is what you want

[fwarren]

Sounds like what you need to do is this:

1. Install Mozillia on one machine and set it up how you want
2. Create an installer to do the installation

To make an installer download the following files

1. Inno Setup [jrsoftware.org] for building setups
2. Script Maker [tafweb.com] a visual IDE to created Inno Setup Scripts for building installs.

It only takes about an hour or so to install both, then to run ScriptMaker to create an install, test that install on another machine, and the go back and tweek it till it works right. It will even support current user installs on NT/2000/XP.

It should be able to install Georga as font on the machine if it is not already there. I will leave it up to you to figure out if you are violating any copyrights/software agreements by doing such.

Bart Bucks are not legal tender

site customization for mail

[hephro]

To make mail setup easy, you can customize mozilla with a single additional file [www.cwi.nl] somewhere in mozilla/default/isp --- this way, the first time a user opens the mail window (or if she/he creates a new mail account) there will be a new radio button for your local mail configuration.

Check Out Phoenix

[Snorpus]

How heterogenous is your environment?

My experience is only with the Windows version, not *nix or Mac. But it "appears" that Phoenix installs to only two directories (and associated sub-directories). One is the main Phoenix directory in C:\Program Files, and the other in Application Data. In particular, it makes no registry entries. Installing Phoenix (at least on Windows) is simply a matter of unzipping, which puts all the files in the right place. There is no "installer" program.

Uninstalling Phoenix on Windows is simply a matter of deleting the directory in Program Files. So it would seem that installing it on multiple machines would basically involve setting up a "model" machine the way you want it, then copying the appropriate Phoenix directories to Application Data and Program Files from the model to the clone.

Caveats: Not sure what you'd need to do (if anything) to get an entry on the Programs menu, if you'd need to create separate models for the various flavors of Windows (NT, 2k, 9x, XP, etc.). Conceivably, you could create a batch file to do a network install of all the various pieces.

Stick with Moz not Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoenix development has died. Hyatt is now working on Safaria full time(he couldn't be happier), Blake(high schooler busy with getting ready for college) is MIA and Asa as usual doesn't comment on such things even when they seem grim. It looks like Phoenix as a project is dying/dead. No work has been done on Phoenix since December, and a critical bug has prevented anyone from using themes/extensions with new nightly versions since 12/28. This most basic bug pretty much shows the state of the project and how the developers involved have either a)lost interest or b) simply moved on. I know Blake had talked how eventually even he would get bored and move on(let any dev would), but it would have been nice if he had at least given some sort of warning.

Also the Mozilla development staff has been axed as well, so it too has slowed down at a very critical time when there have been a ton of regressions.

I'm a big fan of Mozilla(its all I use), so I hate to say these things which some people will undoubtably call FUD. But its not FUD and if you follow the project closely you'll know I'm not making this stuff up. Right now Mozilla is going through a very tough time and I really hope some new blood can come in to save it.

You'll excuse me for being a coward and not signing my name, but sorry that the way this has to be.

Re:Automate It

[Anonymous Coward]

For something free that does about the same thing as Automate, try AutoIT http://www.hiddensoft.com It's a nice for simple scripting that you can compile into a single executable file. However in this circumstance, I'd use InstallRite instead, also free. http://www.epsilonsquared.com
Extremely easy to use--take a snapshot of your system before you install Mozilla, another after you install it and apply all of the customizations, build the installkit. Do this once for each platform you use 9x, NT, W2K, XP, and you will have a 1-click fully customized install package. If InstallRite will handle a full MSOffice 97 install, it'll surely handle Mozilla.
Both of these software packages have Yahoo support groups too.

These 2 packages and Ghost are the only way I could possibly support some 700 Windows workstations spread across 6 public schools.

Re:Uhh... this is what you DON'T want to do

[FatherOfONe]

I agree with you, and am a HUGE fan of WinInstall, but there is a couple of issues.

1. WinInstall handles win9x and winnt/2k/XP clients differently.

2. All the systems you mentioned cost money. A significant amount of money.

3. SMS will only work with Microsoft stuff and it kinda sucks, although I heard the new version is ok. Just expect vendor lock-in.

4. Novell Zenworks will require an NT server or a Novell server, and the version that I used put all the files in NDS. You couldn't edit them or do much with them after you did a scan. WinInstall blew them out of the water.

The core reason you use an unatended install is the EXCACT reason this guy wants one and WinInstall isn't such a good option. He has 50 desktops probably all different. Some have multiple drives some don't. If you made a WinInstall or SMS or ZenWorks package to do this type of install, you better be great a building those packages, because you will be using your "test" machine as a template for all the desktops in the organization. If for some reason that test machine had a DLL that the other 40 didn't have...

Re:Win32 architecture solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a good website called http://appdeploy.com that covers this area.

Re:Easier transition...

[gnugnugnu]

> Alt-D puts me in the address bar

Mozilla 1.3a
works like a charm.

previously alt+d was taken by the debug menu but that has changed to 'Deb_ug' and now alt+d will put you where you want to go, right in the location bar.

Ctrl click (instead of shift click) opens a new window in Mozilla.
Middle click (or click with the mouse wheel) opens a new tab.
Shift click is used for saving a link target.

Internet explorer does not seem to do anything with Ctrl+Click, although i expect it has a different keybinding somewhere.

guess it all depends on what you are used to.

cfengine?

[wayland]

I'd be using cfengine (or something similar) to manage something that size. cfengine claims to be able to deal with Windows NT as well as Unix. I only discovered it a few months ago, so I'm still in the planning stages for our network (which is all Unix anyway), but hopefully something like that will be useful.

http://pikt.uchicago.edu/pikt/other.html

Then again, cfengine might take a while to roll out :).

Re:just copy the directory

[mentin]

The problem is that Mozilla stores some settings in user's config. User config is not easy to clone - my prefs.js has many occurences of full path to user's config folder and to Mozilla installation path, so it would not be easy to just deploy a tarball.

Also he wants to make it default browser, so he need to update some registry keys.

Re:just copy the directory

[cornice]

I tried this. For some reason it was _really_ slow. I have many apps installed this way but it did not work well for Mozilla.

Re:Stick with Moz not Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

Your not going to like to hear this, but you would need to know the people involved. Basically checkins by the people who made Phoenix what it is toady have stopped. If you don't believe me, feel free to do a querey at bugzilla. There has been a total blackout in both communication and checkins by the major Phoenix developers. Sorry I don't have a nice trail of links for you to follow, but suffice to say if you've been following this project closely right now Alarm bells are going off.
You can see that some of the end-users are just now starting to see what I've known for just a little longer then them.
http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewtopic .php?t= 4653

Let me say one thing. Phoenix may not be offcially "dead", but momentum has completely died and without new blood Phoenix will bit rot.

Also just FYI I'm actually a bit more concerned about Mozilla(Phoenix doesn't really "matter"). But I'm not going to start waves of panic about it because I do cherish the project.

It needs registry for Quicklaunch and dflt browser

[BlueUnderwear]

There is one thing where Mozilla does need the registry, namely quicklaunch mode. Quicklaunch mode is quite handy if you have impatient users: this launches all lengthy startup stuff in the background as soon as you log in to your workstation. When you then click on the Mozilla icon, Mozilla is there in under a second. Here is the required registry entry (in regedit format, just put this into a .reg file, and load it using regedit -s)

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run]
"Mozilla Quick Launch"="\"C:\\PROGRA~1\\MOZILLA.ORG\\MOZILLA\\MOZ ILLA.EXE\" -turbo"

Other registry entries might be necessary to set Mozilla as the default browser.

Other handy tips for mozilla configuration (such as locked config items, automatically generated personal config, etc) can be found at http://www.alain.knaff.lu/howto/MozillaCustomizati on/ [knaff.lu]

This is used in the schools participating in the LLL [www.lll.lu] project.

Some Highlights:

• Any configuration options accessible in prefs.js can be stored in a locate mozilla.cfg file (optionnally locked in such a way that it can no longer be overridden by the user):
  • Disable 'Open Unrequested Windows' (kill pop-ups),
  • Enable HTTP Pipelining,
  • Set toolbar to 'Pictures only',
  • Set Home Page to my organization's intranet site,
  • Set start page to 'Blank page',
  • Enable Middle-click for new tab,
  • Enable control+enter for new tab,
  • Default downloads to 'open a progress dialog',
  • Disable Javascript and Plugins for Mail & News
• Using mozilla's own registry (%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\registry.dat) set the profile directory (which contains prefs.js et al.) to be on the user's home directory (H:\). That way, you can have a personalized configuration (Mail & News) automatically created by a script. When the user first logs in, he doesn't need to set his email address, server name, etc for using Mail & News, everything is already done for him!
• Disabling of the bulky XUL.mfl file (whose sizes quickly add up if you have thousands of users): just create a directory named XUL.mfl, and Mozilla will be unable to create that file, and it will still work correctly!
• Automatical loading of the needed registry entries as soon as user logs in, using a netlogon script

At LLL, we deploy our machines using Udpcast [linux.lu], which might not be appropriate in your case (all your machines are different), but as other posters have pointed out, most of the client-side installation options can also be handled by a Zipfile plus a small install script to put stuff into the correct place.

Re:It' won't be easy...

[BlueUnderwear]

Windows has a nasty habit of duplicating roaming profiles, like profiles\user, profiles\user.domain, profiles\user.domain.000, etc...

We have seen this behaviour too. However, apparently, as far as we could see, it would only happen on Win2k, on NTFS partitions. Win2k + FAT32 was ok. So, what we did was create a small D: partition as FAT32, and configured Windows to store the cached user profile on that partition. From then on, our "multiple profiles" problem was gone.

Since your profile location is a hardcoded path in registry.dat, Mozilla will find it, but will try to load the profile in the stale profile location. If that doesn't exist now, it'll throw up a profile manager asking you to recreate one.

Or just store the profile somewhere on the user's home directory (H:\Mozilla\)

...repair prefs.js file, have some mandatory prefs.js entries that are replaced during logon if user changes them (like home page for us), etc...

No need to bother with vbscript. Just use locked settings in the mozilla.cfg file. This page [knaff.lu] described how. Just insert entries such as the following into your mozilla.cfg.txt:

lockPref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://my.home.page/");

Then encrypt the file to mozilla.cfg using this program [knaff.lu] (with an offset of 13). N.B. The mozilla.cfg.txt file must start with a comment (two slashes), and be referenced from all.js or else it will be ignored by mozilla. After having set up a mozilla.cfg, the user can no longer change the relevant settings (they are greyed out), and even if he does manually edit his prefs.js, mozilla will fix prefs.js the next time it starts up.

Re:Some simple ideas.

[BlueUnderwear]

No need for recompilation. You can "lock" configuration settings easily using the mozilla.cfg file. Here's how to do it in 3 easy steps:

1. Put the following line into C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\defaults\pref\all.js:

   pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");

2. Write a mozilla.cfg.txt file containing the config items that you want to lock:

   // Mozilla cfg file
   
   lockPref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://my.home.page/");
   lockPref("network.proxy.type", 2);
   lockPref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://intranet/~admin/proxy.pac");
   

   There is also use a defaultPref command for setting defaults that the user may change.

3. Using the moz-byteshift.pl [knaff.lu] program, "encrypt" the file using an offset of 13, and put it into C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla

Check this page [knaff.lu] for more details.

Granted, this is not foolproof (the user could use the same method as described here to change his settings), but you can make it difficult enough by making the mozilla.cfg file writeable only by the Administrator.

Re:I'd do a centralized installation and use X

[BlueUnderwear]

In the LLL project [www.lll.lu], we started out like this: netscape running on one of 3 "compute servers" (running Linux), displayed on the client workstations (running Windows) using the low-cost xwin32 servers.

However, eventually we gave up on this setup due to bandwidth considerations: it takes a much higher bandwidth to send X commands (containing uncompressed bitmaps) over the network, than it does to send html, gifs and jpegs. So, eventually, we moved to a solution where the browser runs natively on Windows (first netscape, now mozilla), and the Linux box does only the squid caching (for better usage of our WAN connectivity) and file serving (for roaming profiles).

(Of course, the Linux box does lots of other stuff as well (print serving, web server, firewall, user administration, udpcast server, ...), but these are unrelated to the browser issue that we are discussing here ;-) )

How about NSIS?

[smcv]

The Nullsoft Scriptable Install System [nullsoft.com] is the open-source installer developed for Winamp. (Yes, I know Winamp is closed, but the installer it uses is under the zlib license).

Re:Lockout users

[bryhhh]

I've recently done this on our windows network, actually it was using phoenix not mozilla, but the procedure should work for mozilla just as well.

First thing to do is to fire up Mozilla and configure it how you want it to work on your network. Now look in your profile and take a copy of the file 'pref.js' and the file 'localstore.rdf'. Now put these files somewhere safe.

Take a clean machine (fresh install) and repackage Mozilla using WinInstallLE (This can be found on the Windows 2000 CD). Take your prefs.js and localstore.rdf file from before and add them into the package you have just created, ensure they are placed somewhere sensible like %PROGRAMFILES%\mozilla and rename them to something like 'default.js' and 'default.rdf' to prevent confusion with the original files. Ensure you configure your filesystem security so that people who shouldn't be able to change this files that will affect all users, can't.

To deploy the application, you might want to use SMS or maybe Active Directory group policy, but it doesn't stop there. For each user to have your configuration you need to ensure that when a mozilla profile is created for a user that their 'pref.js' and 'localstore.rdf' files are the same as the ones you made earlier, this can be done using a logon script. Here is the logon script that I use.

if exist "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\Default\*.slt" goto setprefs

rem If we get here, then no profile for Phoenix exists, so lets create one

"%PROGRAMFILES%\Phoenix\phoenix.exe" -CreateProfile default

:setprefs

rem Now we need to create (or recreate) the prefs file.

c:
cd "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\default\*.slt"

rem Configure Toolbars
copy "%PROGRAMFILES%\Phoenix\default.rdf" .\localstore.rdf /y >NUL

rem Configure everything else
copy "%PROGRAMFILES%\Phoenix\default.js" .\prefs.js /y >NUL

rem All Done.

This won't prevent users from changing settings, but you can easily do this by modifying your pref.js file. For LOTS more information about doing this try this 111 pages of useful information [netscape.com]