This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How to setup a Firefox Kiosk via CLI on Linux with no Desktop Environment (only X + openbox)

  • 2 iimpendulo
  • 1 inayo le ngxaki
  • 19 views
  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu Mike Kaply

more options

I've found plenty of instructions for setting up a web kiosk on linux with just X and openbox, but they all use the chromium browser. I've searched the web as to how to do this with firefox. I've tried to simply use the instructions for chromium but change things over to firefox, but I'm not sure what the equivalent paths/files are in firefox.

I've got a VM (to test with) and got the chromium setup working (just so that I know X and openbox are behaving). Here is where I'm getting stuck in /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart:

===

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State'

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences

chromium-browser --disable-infobars --kiosk '<http://your-url-here>'

===

I'm not at all sure where the equivalent of "~/.config/chromium/"Local State" would be for firefox. Surely under the ./mozilla/firefox directory, but I know not where.

Same thing for the second sed line, no idea about the equivalent.

The actual command I presume is 'firefox --kiosk 'url of choice'

I've commented out the 'sed' lines and get firefox to start ONCE, but it alwasy exits X uncleanly and times out with getting a lock on .Xauthority. If I remove firefox and delete the .mozilla folder and then reinstall firefox, it will again work only once. When it does work like this, it takes about two minutes for firefox to come up as compared to the chromium setup that only takes several seconds.

Any thoughts or help would be VERY appreciated.

TIA,

Joe

I've found plenty of instructions for setting up a web kiosk on linux with just X and openbox, but they all use the chromium browser. I've searched the web as to how to do this with firefox. I've tried to simply use the instructions for chromium but change things over to firefox, but I'm not sure what the equivalent paths/files are in firefox. I've got a VM (to test with) and got the chromium setup working (just so that I know X and openbox are behaving). Here is where I'm getting stuck in /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart: =============== sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State' sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences chromium-browser --disable-infobars --kiosk '<http://your-url-here>' =============== I'm not at all sure where the equivalent of "~/.config/chromium/"Local State" would be for firefox. Surely under the ./mozilla/firefox directory, but I know not where. Same thing for the second sed line, no idea about the equivalent. The actual command I presume is 'firefox --kiosk 'url of choice' I've commented out the 'sed' lines and get firefox to start ONCE, but it alwasy exits X uncleanly and times out with getting a lock on .Xauthority. If I remove firefox and delete the .mozilla folder and then reinstall firefox, it will again work only once. When it does work like this, it takes about two minutes for firefox to come up as compared to the chromium setup that only takes several seconds. Any thoughts or help would be VERY appreciated. TIA, Joe

All Replies (2)

more options

Hi Netopia:

Not sure if a Local State feature is supported in Kiosk Mode. I don't see it in the documentation:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-enterprise-kiosk-mode

I will ask some Enterprise folks to take a look.

Cheers!

..Roland

more options

Is Local State just where Chrome stores preference? I can't find any documentation on it.

The only way I can think of to see if Firefox exited cleanly is to check for the file "parent.lock" in the profile directory. IF it is there, Firefox did not exit cleanly (you can just delete it)

I'm not sure what to do about the lock on .XAuthority.

This sounds like something we would need a Linux person to take a look at.

Your syntax is correct for Firefox kiosk.