Default Search Engine is Reset in Firefox in an AppVM

User Support
1

I have an AppVM running Firefox ESR based on a minimal Debian 11 template. The default search engine gets occasionally reset to Google from DuckDuckGo. The reset does not happen every reboot.

Is this behavior specific to Qubes OS? Has anybody experienced something similar?

2

I never experienced such behavior. Did you delete Google search in the Firefox Preferences or just shifted it? I did the former.

2 Likes
3

The first time this happened I had deleted Google from the available “Search Shortcuts” (now it’s back), and I had selected DuckDuckGo instead of Google from the search engine drop-down menu. This is Firefox version 115.3.1esr.

I just tested how many reboots it took to reset to Google, and it was about 20. I’ll do two more tests when I have time.

Is there a native Qubes way to monitor what files changed between each VM boot? I just ran find . -type f -mtime 1 and it seems the following files have been changed in the last day (I ran this command after running Firefox and discovering that the search engine had switched to Google):

PARENT=".cache/mozilla/firefox/tkwy2d4f.default-esr
PARENT2="./.mozilla/firefox/tkwy2d4f.default-esr"

~/PARENT/cache2/entries/8A4AD299B2F0E55A552D3CB09E7A57213CF46041:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/D947C7FF193FDB4736C99E9A651000B74F904B3A:        data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/FA91B625EE9DFDBE32818302B2B9D295A2E8C91C:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 3775987712
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/5FFC403042623198B88F2C2C98FB1AD11A84ECA1:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 1897857024
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/2D1E44BE8B0A5191ABEBC268378C6AB64E8CAFFA:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/6C5D2CE92136E9D1906B4530DF63925FBE517FA0:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 610140160
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/C9627A461642AF6B304AFFB3F0AF3EBE9B3F355E:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/15C7AD881BDD5BD9DC06E90E25D0E9C7FD429478:        PNG image data, 128 x 128, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/9C6B821EA1052F158EE543D38C359E997DB852E4:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 3216834816
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/876D4C08B8DA5C44D88856F182ADBE0D8A9E087D:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 1236599040
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/C94C029D079E434ED1FFBCDE41856E5633DF28BE:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/1CF665FE2F2AF4D9A7C68001BFF0AA746D0D9CE3:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 4113694720
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/9686C57ACAA0BEA5F11450C42375AD321D3E4673:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 2399469568
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/3E6DFB8D0B7CF27ED9B94BF3DF311BFE4972CAE6:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 1614938112
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/313AE861852E4949AC83555385922670222F4F33:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/066EC9DB6EAC47D0C3E5CC8B4BF755B811722A70:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 3222470656
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/851ABB2718EAC55391C1267646A5D6E829B14381:        Web Open Font Format (Version 2), TrueType, length 150472, version 770.256
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/DC165B94D5AF7A30B22253D28BF5B478E6CEBEB1:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 4145348608
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/E0DFBBAB5BE95670447119520CE7FDEAA9443E03:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 539099136
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/0D28F11801AC0487C9053B8C0F0D8B4861366C00:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/29D77A249FA899A40B368DA5334E7130D1D01EA1:        Web Open Font Format (Version 2), TrueType, length 107460, version 770.256
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/8CAAE737C98CA22D72218800AA4E22921F5F1022:        PEM certificate
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/228A538B64DA3D36B8C8EEDF043816A6E3E34EAB:        gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 281542912
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/5D11824CA659F9F735B9A45EA5D59B9F1AB0A698:        JSON data
~/PARENT/cache2/entries/19F958BC6E33A35E888B371E118419AD24936A2C:        data
~/PARENT/startupCache/scriptCache-current.bin:                           data
~/PARENT/startupCache/scriptCache-child-current.bin:                     data

~/PARENT2/storage/default/https+++forum.qubes-os.org/cache/morgue/45/{905db47a-c4d8-4972-97d6-bbbdfa815d2d}.final:  snappy framed data
~/PARENT2/storage/default/https+++forum.qubes-os.org/cache/morgue/226/{0450b45d-a4ca-43b9-b725-527eb1165ee2}.final: snappy framed data
~/PARENT2/content-prefs.sqlite:                                                                                     SQLite 3.x database, user version 5, last written using SQLite version 3041002

The json text files don’t seem to have any information about a changing search engine. Using sqlitebrowser to view content-prefs.sqlite doesn’t reveal any data that would correspond with a search engine.

1 Like