ask.com is the only search provider

[Marcin Wisnicki]

Binary package hint: firefox

Recently my Firefox switched from Google to ask.com for search provider. I have not upgraded packages for some time until today. This looks similar to Bug #520682 but that happened long time ago.

There are no other search providers to select and it is not obvious how to add Google back.
Clicking "Get more search engines" gets me to Mozilla addons page where I didn't manage to find "official" Google search provider.
How can I get it back ?

Also, launchpad's bug submission form sucks ass. Did it change recently? I don't remember it being so bad.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for reporting this to Ubuntu. Could you please tell us what the previous version of Firefox was, what the current version is, and which version of Ubuntu you are running? Thanks.

[Marcin Wisnicki (mwisnicki)]

Obviously everything is in latest versions as of today (Ubuntu 10.10, Firefox 3.6.15)

From /var/log/apt/history.log:
firefox:i386 (3.6.13+build3+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.10.1, 3.6.15+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.10.1),

Previous update happened on 2011-02-03.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Note, we've confirmed this is due to the localized search plugins being missing from the new language packs in maverick-proposed

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Reassigning to a langpack package as a representative. I'll fix the problem in langpack-o-matic, and use the language-pack-de task to track the rollout.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This only affects maverick-proposed right now.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

For Natty langpacks we only need them in zh-hans-base. For maverick we need them in all update packs, as the previous ones in final/-updates all have them, and thus they replaced the ones in -base.

[Marcin Wisnicki (mwisnicki)]

I'm using en-US both for system and my account, but I do have langpack-pl installed.
Is it caused by merely installing langpack ?

[Fibonacci (fibonacci-prower)]

Confirmed for language-pack-it.

[Fibonacci (fibonacci-prower)]

The following is a workaround:

1- Remove the symlink /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/common
2- Re-create the symlink /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/common pointing towards /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/en-US

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

That is not the right way to work around it and it might cause future problems for people who follow your workaround.

The only workaround I recommend is to remove the empty /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/$(LANGUAGE) folder for your locale (eg, /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/en-GB if you are using en-GB). This will trick Firefox in to using the fallback en-US searchplugins which it provides independently of the language packs, and will ensure that your system is restored to the intended state once the language packs are fixed.

[hairymnstr (hairymnstr)]

I can confirm the same behaviour on Kubuntu 10.10 amd64. Chris Coulson's work around (#10) has solved the problem for now.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Fixed in langpack-o-matic r360.

[ashutosh chaudhary (arvindchaudharyagra)]

maybe you should try to edit preferences into the firefox's "edit" tab, and setting the home page to google.com. WEell maybe that may work for you.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I requested a full -base export for maverick, it'll arrive on Wednesday. Then I'll rebuild the maverick langpacks in -proposed.

[David Planella (dpm)]

Martin, or Chris, do you know where the localized search plugins extracted from the 10.10 language packs actually come from?

Looking at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-langpack/langpack-o-matic/main/files/head:/extra-files/searchplugins/, this only includes a handful of languages. How can new localized search plugins be added? Do they originally come from the upstream xpis or somewhere else?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

David Planella [2011-03-14 17:14 -0000]:
> Martin, or Chris, do you know where the localized search plugins
> extracted from the 10.10 language packs actually come from?

They were originally stored in some (now lost) data dir on macquarie.
I extracted them from all -base packages in Maverick and put them into
langpack-o-matic bzr now.

> Looking at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-
> langpack/langpack-o-matic/main/files/head:/extra-files/searchplugins/,
> this only includes a handful of languages.

The other languages will fall back to en-US.

> How can new localized search plugins be added?

We just add them to extra-files/searchplugins/<locale>/.

> Do they originally come from the upstream xpis or somewhere else?

I'm not sure. I suppose they were created by Arne/Alex/Chris at some
point, though.

Martin

--
Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I am uploading new langpacks to maverick-proposed now. As this regression only affected maverick-proposed, I'm closing the maverick task now.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I'm uploading new langpacks to natty right now which also contain search plugins again.

[Julian Alarcon (julian-alarcon)]

Hey guys, the same happend again in Firefox but in nightly. I don't know where to report it.

[Joost Smit (j-j-smit)]

I can confirm the same happened today to me on 11.10 beta ..all other search engines are gone.

[cuc (cuc+)]

here too

[knorr (a-sokolov)]

only ask.com. yandex.ru, wikipedia.org

[z3z (z3z)]

I too am on Oneiric beta, running Firefox 7. After I installed the latest updates yesterday, all my search engines have disappeared except Google UK and Ask.com. My default language setup is English GB.

[W Karaki (wafaa-karaki)]

Same here. Ubuntu 11.10 beta, and running Firefox 7. I actually don't have the search bar at all, but after the last update, on right click I get "search Ask for..." instead of Google, even though in about:config I have Google as my search engine.

[Krzysztof Janowicz (janowicz)]

same here...

[Timothy Arceri (t-fridey)]

I only have Ask.com in the latest Oneiric release