FF62 upgrade : search engines override, french dictionnary and language pack lost.

[Coeur Noir]

Hi,

Ubuntu 18.04 here, language system is french FR.

When FF upgrades to 62, two problems occur :

1. french dictionnary and french language pack are « lost » in the upgrade. Need to reinstall both.

2. Some search engines come back at each re-launch ( google, amazon ) and search engines list order is also lost at each relaunch.

Affects many users :
https://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=21967917#p21967917
https://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=21968315#p21968315

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

Illustration ( gif )

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sylvie Gallet (sylvie-gallet)]

Hi!

On my 16.04.1, only the French dictionary got lost.

[Forage (forage)]

It is not limited to just French dictionaries.
All additional dictionaries I had (English (GB), Dutch (NL) and French) are no longer present after the update, just English (US) remains.

Reinstalling the Hunspell libraries did not solve the issue.

I do not see the same behaviour with the language packs though, they are still there and have been updated nicely.

Search engines do not come back either, only once after the update. Could it be that this happened to you because you manually (re)installed the language pack?

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

I've got the same behavior under 16.04

« Reinstalling the Hunspell libraries did not solve the issue »
→ go to add-ons Mozilla webpage to re-add your dictionaries ?

I only had to take care once regarding dictionary and language pack to fix that part of issue.

Whereas whatever I try about search engines list is always « reset » and reordered to a default state I don't like at each re-launch.

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

The search engines that always come back are located in :

/usr/lib/firefox/distribution/searchplugins/locale/

sub-folders fr and en-*

They are

- amazon.fr|com ( yes, both )
- duckduckgo.fr
- google.fr

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Our custom search engines reappearing between search engine cache rebuilds is not a new issue, but it's being made worse by a new bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1489820) which is causing a cache rebuild to happen on every restart rather than after app upgrades (and is also responsible for making some en-US search engines appear for non en-US users).

I've found some other issues with our search defaults as well. I'll have some updates for this tomorrow.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

And the dictionary problem is a regression from https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/8810007550b1

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

Thanks for explanations and your time !

[Forage (forage)]

>> Reinstalling the Hunspell libraries did not solve the issue
> go to add-ons Mozilla webpage to re-add your dictionaries ?

I believe that Firefox is using the Hunspell system libraries for the dictionaries, so there should not be a need to install the individual dictionary add-ons separately.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package firefox - 62.0+build2-0ubuntu0.14.04.4

---------------
firefox (62.0+build2-0ubuntu0.14.04.4) trusty-security; urgency=medium

  * Fix LP: #1791789: Mark distribution search engines as read-only, so that
    they are marked as hidden in rather than removed from the search engine
    cache when a user "removes" them (they can't actually be removed from disk).
    This stops them from reappearing on cache rebuilds
    - add debian/patches/mark-distribution-search-engines-as-read-only.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Backport upstream change to the search service to not handle locale changes
    on shutdown. As well as resulting in en-US search engines being added to
    the search engine cache for all locales, it was resulting in a cache
    rebuild on every restart, making the above bug worse (fixes another part of
    LP: #1791789)
    - add debian/patches/search-service-dont-handle-locale-changes-on-shutdown.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Ensure that region-specific search defaults are disabled everywhere
    again
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - remove debian/patches/disable-geo-specific-search-defaults-for-us.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Fix the Ubuntu search engine defaults now that the "browser.search.order."
    and "browser.search.defaultengine" prefs have been removed from the default
    build
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - remove debian/patches/ubuntu-search-defaults.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Set "intl.locale.requested" in vendor-gre.js rather than in distribution.ini.
    The former is loaded by the pref service much earlier, and this pref needs
    to be initialized before distribution.ini prefs are applied in order for
    locale-specific prefs to work
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - update debian/vendor-gre.js
  * Rename debian/patches/revert-upstream-search-engine-changes.patch to
    debian/patches/no-region-overrides-for-google-search.patch to better
    reflect what the patch is for (described in the patch header)
  * Drop debian/patches/normalize-distribution-searchplugins.patch - this is
    no longer needed and hasn't been for a long time. It was added to fix
    loss of metadata on upgrade for distribution search engines when the
    Firefox install location was versioned
  * Set "spellchecker.dictionary_path" by default to point to /usr/share/hunspell
    so that system dictionaries are loaded again, now that Firefox no longer
    loads them from its own install directory. Fixes another part of
    LP: #1791789
    - update debian/firefox.links.in
    - update debian/vendor-gre.js

 -- Chris Coulson <email address hidden> Wed, 12 Sep 2018 01:36:32 +0100

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package firefox - 62.0+build2-0ubuntu0.18.04.4

---------------
firefox (62.0+build2-0ubuntu0.18.04.4) bionic-security; urgency=medium

  * Fix LP: #1791789: Mark distribution search engines as read-only, so that
    they are marked as hidden in rather than removed from the search engine
    cache when a user "removes" them (they can't actually be removed from disk).
    This stops them from reappearing on cache rebuilds
    - add debian/patches/mark-distribution-search-engines-as-read-only.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Backport upstream change to the search service to not handle locale changes
    on shutdown. As well as resulting in en-US search engines being added to
    the search engine cache for all locales, it was resulting in a cache
    rebuild on every restart, making the above bug worse (fixes another part of
    LP: #1791789)
    - add debian/patches/search-service-dont-handle-locale-changes-on-shutdown.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Ensure that region-specific search defaults are disabled everywhere
    again
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - remove debian/patches/disable-geo-specific-search-defaults-for-us.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Fix the Ubuntu search engine defaults now that the "browser.search.order."
    and "browser.search.defaultengine" prefs have been removed from the default
    build
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - remove debian/patches/ubuntu-search-defaults.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Set "intl.locale.requested" in vendor-gre.js rather than in distribution.ini.
    The former is loaded by the pref service much earlier, and this pref needs
    to be initialized before distribution.ini prefs are applied in order for
    locale-specific prefs to work
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - update debian/vendor-gre.js
  * Rename debian/patches/revert-upstream-search-engine-changes.patch to
    debian/patches/no-region-overrides-for-google-search.patch to better
    reflect what the patch is for (described in the patch header)
  * Drop debian/patches/normalize-distribution-searchplugins.patch - this is
    no longer needed and hasn't been for a long time. It was added to fix
    loss of metadata on upgrade for distribution search engines when the
    Firefox install location was versioned
  * Set "spellchecker.dictionary_path" by default to point to /usr/share/hunspell
    so that system dictionaries are loaded again, now that Firefox no longer
    loads them from its own install directory. Fixes another part of
    LP: #1791789
    - update debian/firefox.links.in
    - update debian/vendor-gre.js

 -- Chris Coulson <email address hidden> Wed, 12 Sep 2018 01:36:32 +0100

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package firefox - 62.0+build2-0ubuntu0.16.04.4

---------------
firefox (62.0+build2-0ubuntu0.16.04.4) xenial-security; urgency=medium

  * Fix LP: #1791789: Mark distribution search engines as read-only, so that
    they are marked as hidden in rather than removed from the search engine
    cache when a user "removes" them (they can't actually be removed from disk).
    This stops them from reappearing on cache rebuilds
    - add debian/patches/mark-distribution-search-engines-as-read-only.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Backport upstream change to the search service to not handle locale changes
    on shutdown. As well as resulting in en-US search engines being added to
    the search engine cache for all locales, it was resulting in a cache
    rebuild on every restart, making the above bug worse (fixes another part of
    LP: #1791789)
    - add debian/patches/search-service-dont-handle-locale-changes-on-shutdown.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Ensure that region-specific search defaults are disabled everywhere
    again
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - remove debian/patches/disable-geo-specific-search-defaults-for-us.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Fix the Ubuntu search engine defaults now that the "browser.search.order."
    and "browser.search.defaultengine" prefs have been removed from the default
    build
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - remove debian/patches/ubuntu-search-defaults.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
  * Set "intl.locale.requested" in vendor-gre.js rather than in distribution.ini.
    The former is loaded by the pref service much earlier, and this pref needs
    to be initialized before distribution.ini prefs are applied in order for
    locale-specific prefs to work
    - update debian/distribution.ini
    - update debian/vendor-gre.js
  * Rename debian/patches/revert-upstream-search-engine-changes.patch to
    debian/patches/no-region-overrides-for-google-search.patch to better
    reflect what the patch is for (described in the patch header)
  * Drop debian/patches/normalize-distribution-searchplugins.patch - this is
    no longer needed and hasn't been for a long time. It was added to fix
    loss of metadata on upgrade for distribution search engines when the
    Firefox install location was versioned
  * Set "spellchecker.dictionary_path" by default to point to /usr/share/hunspell
    so that system dictionaries are loaded again, now that Firefox no longer
    loads them from its own install directory. Fixes another part of
    LP: #1791789
    - update debian/firefox.links.in
    - update debian/vendor-gre.js

 -- Chris Coulson <email address hidden> Wed, 12 Sep 2018 01:36:32 +0100

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

This should be fixed now. Some of you may still have duplicate Amazon engines enabled after the upgrade (a US one and a locale-specific one). You can remove the duplicate one manually, but we may push out a further update to do this automatically if we can come up with a way to do that which isn't too risky.

[Forage (forage)]

I can confirm that the dictionaries are back again, using the Hunspell libraries, and no need to have them installed as separate add-ons.

The search engines did not come back again either.

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

Is the problem back ? Or is it a wrong setting on my system ?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1808243