Firefox, dbus and NetworkManager OH MY (redux)

[Steven W. Orr]

This whole question about firefox coming up every single time in offline 
mode is a real pain. The message below was a fix that I found on the net 
on how to patch the problem.

But recently, the problem came back, probably because of some update I 
made. The change that I made had been reverted. This time, I poked further 
on the net and came up with

http://www.linux-archive.org/ubuntu-user/82245-firefox-3-how-avoid-offline-m...

where somone says that I should toggle

about:config toolkit.networkmanager.disable and set it to "true"

Ok, I did that and the problem seems to now be fixed. I guess that means 
I don't have anything to complain about. I'm sorry, but Ijust don't get 
it! Is everyone also coming up in offline mode? Yes, my eth0 (and my eth1) 
and not under NetworkManager, they are just started by good old network. 
If my eth0 and eth1 were to be started by NW, would that have caused me to 
not see this problem?

I'd just really like to understand this better.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:07:53
From: Steven W. Orr 
Reply-To: "Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora."
     
To: Fedora List 
Subject: Firefox, dbus and NetworkManager OH MY

Now that I'm running F10, I notice that every time I start firefox, it comes up 
in offline mode. I can only browse by going to online mode. Very annoying. I 
googled around and found that those wacky guys over in ubuntu country had 
figgered it out. Here's the deal: Change every instance in

/etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf

of

<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
    to
   <deny send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>

and then do a service NetworkManager restart and your new firefox will come up 
online.

Also, I am running my network over a DHCP connection to my cablemodem provider, 
so it's not really clear to me that NetworkManager should even be doing 
*anything*.

I want to be a good Netizen and report this to bugzilla. My question is this: 
Is this a firefox, a NetworkManager or a dbus bug?

[Frank Cox]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:25:16 -0500 (EST)
Steven W. Orr wrote:
> I'm sorry, but Ijust don't get 
> it! Is everyone also coming up in offline mode?

I've never seen that problem.  But I wait until my network connection is up
(the little balls stop spinning and it tells me "You are connected to...")
before loading Firefox.

[steve]

Hi,
> Ok, I did that and the problem seems to now be fixed. I guess that means
> I don't have anything to complain about. I'm sorry, but Ijust don't get
> it! Is everyone also coming up in offline mode? Yes, my eth0 (and my eth1)
> and not under NetworkManager, they are just started by good old network.
> If my eth0 and eth1 were to be started by NW, would that have caused me to
> not see this problem?
>
> I'd just really like to understand this better.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Toolkit.networkmanager.disable

regards,
- steve

[Tim]

On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 22:25 -0500, Steven W. Orr wrote:
> Is everyone also coming up in offline mode? Yes, my eth0 (and my eth1)
> and not under NetworkManager, they are just started by good old
> network.

And have you stopped the NetworkManager service?  If not, it could be
saying that you're offline because *it* hasn't made a connection.
Regardless of any other connections that are on.
> If my eth0 and eth1 were to be started by NW, would that have caused
> me to not see this problem?

That would be right.

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sun, 2009-01-18 at 17:08 +1030, Tim wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 22:25 -0500, Steven W. Orr wrote:
> > Is everyone also coming up in offline mode? Yes, my eth0 (and my eth1)
> > and not under NetworkManager, they are just started by good old
> > network.
>
> And have you stopped the NetworkManager service?  If not, it could be
> saying that you're offline because *it* hasn't made a connection.
> Regardless of any other connections that are on.
> > If my eth0 and eth1 were to be started by NW, would that have caused
> > me to not see this problem?
>
> That would be right.

Correct. NM thinks that if it doesn't handle the connection, then there
is no connection, and the rest of the system that asks NM (including
Firefox, Evolution and probably lots of others) get confused.

poc

[Steven W. Orr]

On Sunday, Jan 18th 2009 at 01:38 -0000, quoth Tim:

=>On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 22:25 -0500, Steven W. Orr wrote:
=>> Is everyone also coming up in offline mode? Yes, my eth0 (and my eth1)
=>> and not under NetworkManager, they are just started by good old
=>> network. 
=>
=>And have you stopped the NetworkManager service?  If not, it could be
=>saying that you're offline because *it* hasn't made a connection.
=>Regardless of any other connections that are on.

I have *not* stopped NetworkManager but I will if you can tell me that's 
the right thing to do. If I run system-config-network, I can see that eth0 
and eth1 are *not* controlled by NW. But it only shows me those two 
interfaces. Am I confident that lo0 is not controlled by MW?

=>> If my eth0 and eth1 were to be started by NW, would that have caused
=>> me to not see this problem?
=>
=>That would be right.
=>

[Tim]

Tim:
> And have you stopped the NetworkManager service?  If not, it could be
> saying that you're offline because *it* hasn't made a connection.
> Regardless of any other connections that are on.

Steven W. Orr:
> I have *not* stopped NetworkManager but I will if you can tell me
> that's the right thing to do. If I run system-config-network, I can
> see that eth0 and eth1 are *not* controlled by NW. But it only shows
> me those two interfaces. Am I confident that lo0 is not controlled by
> MW?

If you're not using it to control your interfaces, then turn the service
off, permanently.  It's not needed.