firefox defaults to offline

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

Running f20 and firefox 30.0.

Firefox now starts in "Offline" mode.  This is very annoying to me. 
I've never found a need to use a browser offline.

I've looked at every preference, about:config setting, and I haven't 
been able to find a way to start firefox in "Online" mode.

Any helpers?

TIA,
Mike Wright

[Ed Greshko]

On 07/03/14 05:03, Mike Wright wrote:
> Running f20 and firefox 30.0.
>
> Firefox now starts in "Offline" mode.  This is very annoying to me. I've never found a need to use a browser offline.
>
> I've looked at every preference, about:config setting, and I haven't been able to find a way to start firefox in "Online" mode.
>
> Any helpers?

I've not heard of this complaint in a long time.....

In the past, one would go to about:config and find the entry for "networkmanager" and disable it.

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2014-07-03 at 06:15 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 07/03/14 05:03, Mike Wright wrote:
> > Running f20 and firefox 30.0.
> >
> > Firefox now starts in "Offline" mode.  This is very annoying to me. I've never found a need to use a browser offline.
> >
> > I've looked at every preference, about:config setting, and I haven't been able to find a way to start firefox in "Online" mode.
> >
> > Any helpers?
>
> I've not heard of this complaint in a long time.....
>
> In the past, one would go to about:config and find the entry for "networkmanager" and disable it.

Or actually configure NetworkManager consistently. IOW if NM is running,
you need to check that it is managing the network interface, otherwise
some apps (Evolution being another one) will think the network is down
when it isn't.

poc

[Joe Zeff]

On 07/02/2014 03:42 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Or actually configure NetworkManager consistently. IOW if NM is running,
> you need to check that it is managing the network interface, otherwise
> some apps (Evolution being another one) will think the network is down
> when it isn't.

Several years ago, yumex started acting strangely: it had no trouble 
checking for updates, but when I told it to download and install the 
updates it would claim that it was off-line.  I ended up disabling the 
network check completely because in the unlikely event that my network 
connection were down, I'd not be running yumex.  My attitude toward this 
is that *I* am the network check.

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 02 July 2014, Joe Zeff sent:
> My attitude toward this is that *I* am the network check.

It tends to be the best approach.  It's confusing if a client decides
it's offline, for some reason (that may not be correct), and not only
goes offline, but doesn't really inform you about it, and doesn't like
to go online when you fight against it.

Automatically detecting it isn't too easily done.  For instance, I am on
a LAN, with a local web server.  I can easily be only browsing the local
webserver, while the internet is unavailable.  So I wouldn't want
Firefox to go offline because it couldn't detect some remote service.
And it couldn't use the PC's NetworkManager status to determine whether
I was online, as it's another device that connects to the internet.

The whole work-offline mode is fundamentally broken, anyway, by the huge
plethora of websites that just will not work offline.  Whether because
they're very dynamic, keep using the same URI but sending other request
information to receive new data, or are deliberately cache hostile.
Browsers often - but oddly, not always - refuse to work offline with my
own local webserver, serving flat HTML, with standard URIs.

[Mike Wright]

07/02/2014 03:42 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-07-03 at 06:15 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> > On 07/03/14 05:03, Mike Wright wrote:
> > > Running f20 and firefox 30.0.
> > >
> > > Firefox now starts in "Offline" mode.  This is very annoying to me. I've never found a need to use a browser offline.
> > >
> > > I've looked at every preference, about:config setting, and I haven't been able to find a way to start firefox in "Online" mode.
> > >
> > > Any helpers?
> >
> > I've not heard of this complaint in a long time.....
> >
> > In the past, one would go to about:config and find the entry for "networkmanager" and disable it.
>
> Or actually configure NetworkManager consistently. IOW if NM is running,
> you need to check that it is managing the network interface, otherwise
> some apps (Evolution being another one) will think the network is down
> when it isn't.

Hi POC,

Interesting.  Been here a long time I don't recall this at all.  Because 
I haven't any wifi and define all interfaces in network-scripts (and had 
serious problems with NM messing things up in earlier fedoras) this is 
the first fedora (20) I've given it a spin.

Set the primary device to NM_CONTROLLED=yes and ifupdown'd the ifc and 
firefox came up online. Set NM_CONTROLLED=no, ifupdown'd the ifc and it 
still comes up online now.  I think it's more of NM's invisible 
footprints I mentioned in another post.

In my searches through about:config "toolkit.networkmanager.disable" 
wasn't on my list of things to look for :)

Thanks for the pointers.  Learn a little bit more every day.

[poma]

On 07/02/2014 11:03 PM, Mike Wright wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Running f20 and firefox 30.0.
>
> Firefox now starts in "Offline" mode.  This is very annoying to me.
> I've never found a need to use a browser offline.
>
> I've looked at every preference, about:config setting, and I haven't
> been able to find a way to start firefox in "Online" mode.
>
> Any helpers?
>
> TIA,
> Mike Wright

Perhaps it has to do with the old "network" service you running.
You won't hit this if you have a properly configured and online NetworkManager or systemd-networkd services.

user_pref("network.manage-offline-status", false);

Ref.
Internet Connectivity and Work Offline Mode
https://people.mozilla.org/~vtsatskin/notes/Projects/Internet%20Connectivity...

poma