uBO ignores policies.json

[EKHH]

Prerequisites

• I verified that this is not a filter list issue. Report any issues with filter lists or broken website functionality in the uAssets issue tracker.
• This is NOT a YouTube, Facebook or Twitch report. These sites MUST be reported by clicking their respective links.
• This is not a support issue or a question. For support, questions, or help, visit /r/uBlockOrigin.
• I performed a cursory search of the issue tracker to avoid opening a duplicate issue.
• The issue is not present after disabling uBO in the browser.
• I checked the documentation to understand that the issue I am reporting is not normal behavior.

I tried to reproduce the issue when...

• uBO is the only extension.
• uBO uses default lists and settings.
• using a new, unmodified browser profile.

Description

In accordance with advises given in the relevant page and #3095, I I have configured uBlock Origin on NixOS 26.05 using Home Manager. Below I attached the relevant snippet of my configuration.

programs.librewolf.policies = {
  BlockAboutConfig = true;
  ExtensionSettings = {
    "3rdparty".Extensions."[email protected]" = {
      userSettings = [
        ["advancedUserEnabled" "true"]
        ["contextMenuEnabled" "false"]
      ];
      disableDashboard = true;
    };
  };
};

The said configuration produced policies.json as shown, which appeared to be in the correct format.

$ sed -e 1p -e 3p -n -e 54,71p ./distribution/policies.json
{
  "policies": {
    "3rdparty": {
      "Extensions": {
        "[email protected]": {
          "disableDashboard": true,
          "userSettings": [
            [
              "advancedUserEnabled",
              "true"
            ],
            [
              "contextMenuEnabled",
              "false"
            ]
          ]
        }
      }
    },
    "BlockAboutConfig": true,

Navigation to about:config was blocked as expected, but Make use of context menu where appropriate was selected in the dashboard whereas I am an advanced user was not. The dashboard was not disabled.

A specific URL where the issue occurs.

about:policies

Steps to Reproduce

1. Configure uBlock Origin using distribution/policies.json.
2. Open the dashboard.

Expected behavior

uBlock Origin should respect entries provided in policies.json.

Actual behavior

uBlock Origin does not respect entries provided in policies.json.

uBO version

1.68.0

Browser name and version

LibreWolf 145.0.1-2

Operating System and version

Linux 6.17.11-300.fc43.x86_64

[gorhill]

uBlock Origin does not respect entries provided in policies.json

uBO doesn't deal with files in your file system. It uses browser API browser.storage.managed to access policies, and this currently works as expected on all officially supported platforms supporting the API.

You will have to investigate more on your side to figure why this doesn't work. At first glance, it seems you are trying to use Chromium-browser policy syntax into a Firefox-based browser.

Since you are essentially asking for support, I will convert this into a Q/A discussion item.

[EKHH]

@gorhill Are you certain that it was written in Chromium-based syntax? In the link you provided for storage.managed, it mentioned that one could use either native manifest or 3rdparty enterprise policy, which, I believe, has the identical syntax as the one I posted. I was also using the snippet you had posted for Firefox in #3095. I could not see a difference.

[EKHH]

I have successfully reproduced this issue on a separate machine in a container with Alpine Linux and LibreWolf. However, I noticed that it functioned expectedly when Firefox ESR was used instead. I hypothesize that neither the policies nor the extension was at fault and will report instead to the LibreWolf team.

[gorhill]

I have this policy file at ~/.mozilla/managed-storage/[email protected], which content is:

{
  "name": "[email protected]",
  "description": "",
  "type": "storage",
  "data": {
    "disableDashboard": true,
    "userSettings": [
      [
        "advancedUserEnabled",
        "true"
      ],
      [
        "contextMenuEnabled",
        "false"
      ]
    ],
    "toOverwrite": {
      "filters": [
      ]
    }
  }
}

It works on my side.

[EKHH]

Thank you @gorhill and sorry for bothering you. Unfortunately, managed storage manifest is not a choice for me. A machine-wide policy is neccessary. Fortunately, we have made some progress here. The bug was introduced by source/patches/custom-ubo-assets-bootstrap-location.patch and will hopefully be addressed soon.