August, 2022 | David's Blog

Firefox Sync and temporary containers fix

My synchronized Firefox items got out of sync. Here is how I fixed that.

Log out of Firefox Sync on every machine that has Firefox.
Backup your profile on your master machine.
On every machine except the machine I want to keep as master, delete all temporary containers.
1. This is most easily done with
```
about:preferences#containers
```
2. Click on the remove button for all the temporary containers that start with tmp.
Go to
```
about:support
```
in Firefox on the master machine.
1. Click the Open Directory button to open the profile directory folder.
Click the Open Directory button to open the profile directory folder.
Copy the
```
containers.json
```
file to an external file share of some sort. It could be a USB key, or Nextcloud, or email it to yourself and use webmail to get a copy of it.
Go to
```
about:support
```
in Firefox on the slave machine.
1. Click the Open Directory button to open the profile directory folder.
2. Exit Firefox.
Copy the
```
containers.json
```
file from the external share to the opened profile folder. Yes – replace the file.
Start Firefox on the slave machine, and log in to the containers you have set which need to keep their login state.

~~Log in to Firefox Sync on the master machine.~~ You can do this, though it will only really help with keeping bookmarks in sync.
1. ~~Note that it sent me a confirmation code to my email address.~~
~~Log in to Firefox Sync on all the rest of the machines.~~

Note that if in Step 2, you have too many containers to click the remove button on: Navigate to
```
about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox
```
1. Scroll down to Temporary Containers and click “Inspect” to the right of it.
2. Click “Console”
3. Insert into the console

const containers = await browser.contextualIdentities.query({});
await Promise.all(containers.map(container => {
if (tmp.container.isTemporary(container.cookieStoreId)) return;
const prefix = 'tmp';
if (container.name.substring(0, prefix.length) !== prefix) {return;}
return browser.contextualIdentities.remove(container.cookieStoreId);
}));
console.log("done");

Credit where credit is due: https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/371

SO, I’m trying to use a WordPress plugin that lets one copy the code above to the clipboard. However, what then got pasted into the Firefox console was “helpfully” upgraded to UTF fancy quotes instead of the simple ASCII ‘ and ” characters. Please stop helping … or at least give me a way to override.

And of course … it does not work.

I have a set of temporary containers on my master machine, but, my other machines will not copy that list.

At least the slave instances don’t wipe out the master list.

I’ve updated this post with instructions that do copy the containers list to the slave machines. I don’t expect that Firefox Sync will be able to keep them in sync, though.

Microsoft idiocy again

Work wanted to implement Windows Hello. We got cameras, and it seems like a good idea.

First problem: during setup, it tells me I need to install Microsoft Authenticator, and leads me to the Microsoft App Store. Authenticator is only available for smartphones, and this is a laptop. Y’all couldn’t tell that?

Second problem: I click Logout, and Windows Hello logs me right back in. So, no-one during product testing considered that I might need to log out so I could log in as someone else?

Ah – my mistake was assuming Microsoft does product testing. They don’t need to test; they have 100 million users who will test for them, for free. Of course the hidden cost is that their idiocy is on full display with this scheme.

Back to Windows Hello: instead of logging out, you choose Switch User. Okay, do that. See some software on the box I don’t need. Try to un-install it.

“There are other users logged on to this computer. To properly uninstall this program, switch to and log off each user before you continue.”

Thank you for telling me to perform an impossible operation (logging off) when Windows Hello is installed.

Idiots.

Follow up to “Microsoft is bad at software” – as a matter of fact, Microsoft is REALLY bad at software

In my previous post, one of my complaints was that I had deleted a journal mailbox connector, yet the email kept flowing out the connector to the partner organization.

The problem is that new Exchange Admin Center –> Mail Flows –> Connectors shows you an administration interface that appears to let you administer your connectors. You can create a new connector in the new Exchange Admin Center; but you cannot delete it. Well, the new Exchange Admin Center will show you that it is deleted, but the mail will continue to flow out of your network.

The only way to stop the flow of email out through the connector is to switch to the classic Exchange Admin Center.

Then, when you go in to classic Exchange Admin Center –> Mail Flows –> Connectors you will see that your connector still exists and is pumping out your email.

The particular deliciousness of this failure is that as of the end of last week, classic Exchange Admin Center –> Mail Flows –> Connectors shows only a message that to manage the connectors, you have to switch to new Exchange Admin Center.

Amazon Music Player fixed their gapless playback problem. :-)

I was prompted to update the Amazon Music Player for Windows yesterday, and I am happy to report that the problem with gapless playback is no more.

Thank you! If you are on the programming team who fixed this, I thank you very much for doing so.

Microsoft is bad at software

These past few years at work, we moved from Novell to Microsoft. It has definitely been a move for the worse.

Novell	Feature -poor	High quality	Low expense	Security: low profile
Microsoft	Feature -rich	Low quality	High expense	Security: target rich environment

Comparison between Novell and Microsoft

I’m just going to say that I dearly love (not):

That Exchange Online has a new command New-DistributionGroup -RoomList which cannot be seen in admin.exchange.microsoft.com. New feature? Microsoft says Yay! Actually making it available to end user administrators? Ain’t no-one got time for that. Certainly this has been vetted thoroughly for security, too.
Exchange Online –> Mail Flow –> Connectors –> Status set to “Off” does nothing. Mail still kept going to the partner, a week later.
Set-Place command for adding the rooms to the RoomList – error! No worky! How to fix? Reboot the PC I was trying to run the PowerShell script on. Now it works. This is just so impressive. Have you tried turning it off and back on again? It’s two decades into the 21st Centrury – shouldn’t someone up there be ashamed?
User asks for help, so I get delegate rights to her mailbox. The delegates rights are present (I run a script to check) but never did her mailbox populate so I could see what was going on in her mailbox. I deleted my own OST cache file just to make sure it wasn’t my machine. Ultimately, I had to use Outlook Web Access to see her mailbox.
1. Every week we get multiple help desk tickets about folders not populating or visible for delegates.
Exchange search is awful. Admittedly, I am coming from a GroupWise experience where search was great. But as important as search is, I would have thought that Microsoft could at least have pulled off “competent” – nope. I particularly like (not) that OWA has a drop-down for “search all folders” but the search only searches the current folder. What a bunch a maroons.

These were all in the last three days. I’ve seen nothing but this sort of low quality software for so many months now. Don’t even get me started on SharePoint.

Don’t forget – Microsoft will break your stuff if you do business with a competitor.

Dear Lord I wish I could retire tomorrow.

I’m not finding Rimworld to be very fun

It got an “Overwhelmingly Positive” score on the Steam store, and I bet for younger players it is great. But I’m old, so my brain does not move as fast as young peoples’ do.

This means I lose a lot. Half of the time I have two of my four man crew in the hospital (the room I set up to be my hospital). Pretty much as soon as people are healthy, the AI throws another rabid schnauser / deer / antelope at my crew.

The AI in this game is supposed to be really good (by reputation I have read). But for me, it never lets up and there aren’t any easier / lower settings I can set. It is simply unrelenting and oppressive.

I want to like this game; I’ve never played The Sims but I imagine this is like The Spacefaring Sims On Another Planet. It has goals and objectives – and it applies pressure to get there. So it’s not bad at all. I also really like that it has a Linux native version. The soundtrack is really good.

There are supposed to be quests in this game, where I send off people to accomplish whatever goal. I lose (or nearly lose) so many rabid animal fights (or malevolent humans) that I cannot afford to send people on the quest. So then I’m told I failed yet another quest.

But if the only thing that ever happens in this game is that my pawns* die often, then I’m going to be sad I spent the money on it.

I’ll try some more; but I hope fun shows up soon.

*that’s what the game calls them.