Firefox user-agent is malformed

[Thomas Folz-Donahue]

Binary package hint: firefox

New dapper firefox user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv: 1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060523 Ubuntu/dapper Firefox/1.5.0.3

Mozilla's user-agent string specification is http://www.mozilla.org/build/revised-user-agent-strings.html

Specifically, it's supposed to go something like this-
MozillaProductToken (MozillaComment) GeckoProductToken *(VendorProductToken|VendorComment)

but Ubuntu put it's vendor comment
1) between the MozillaComment and the GeckoProductToken
2) not in parentheses

That's not the right way to construct a user-agent. This issue isn't simply academic, though- some sites don't think the browser is Firefox. One such site is

http://www.nmhschool.org

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

Ah. You want it to read:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv: 1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060523 Firefox/1.5.0.3 (Ubuntu/dapper)

The parentheses don't seem to be very important according to the
spec, but I suppose people might find that easier to parse.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

we need an evaluation on how to fix this ... at best with a patch of course :-P

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

hmmm ... can you please confirm that this is now correct in latest feisty package?

[Christian Svensson (bluecmd)]

Still a problem in Gutsy:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070719 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.5

[Christian Svensson (bluecmd)]

This would be a patch, but the question is if it's a valid problem?

[Christian Svensson (bluecmd)]

And this would be a full tested patch for the source-package. With it I have a useragent like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070722 Firefox/2.0.0.5 (Ubuntu/7.10 - gutsy)

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2007 at 12:32:57PM -0000, Christian Svensson wrote:
> And this would be a full tested patch for the source-package. With it I have a useragent like this:
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070722 Firefox/2.0.0.5 (Ubuntu/7.10 - gutsy)

So this patch is ment for gutsy?

Can you summarize what is wrong with the current one?

 - Alexander

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

While a patch is included in the bug report that does not warrant the bug being in a Fix Committed state.

[Nicola Ferralis (feranick)]

Still there in hardy:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042513 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.10

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Changed to ubufox.
What is wrong with the following:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009043018 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.0.10

[Dries Desmet (dries)]

Ubuntu maverick is still affected by this bug. According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko_user_agent_string_reference the string should be:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101206 Firefox/3.6.13

but it now is:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101206 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.13

Some websites don't think this browser is firefox, and in one particular case I got redirected to the mobile version of a website. On reading up on this issue in this bug report, some people think it's not that important, but it's kinda stupid to have to report to webmasters that I cannot see their website on firefox under linux. They discard it as being a niche issue and don't address it. We could make a case to such webmasters if ubuntu at least followed the instructions for the user agent string set by the mozilla developers.

case in point: http://www.crmart.be redirects me to http://m.crmart.be while on all other browsers (os x, windows, but also chromium on linux) redirects correctly to /nl/index.php