We use a proxy server in our school and having to put the network information into Firefox for each user would be a nightmare!

Step 1
Locate the file /usr/share/firefox/greprefs/all.js and open. In the terminal you can type:

sudo gedit /usr/share/firefox/greprefs/all.js

This will open the firefox preferences file in the terminal.


Step 2
Locate the string "proxy.type" using the find function (CTRL+F) and change the following appropreately:

pref("network.proxy.type", 1);
pref("network.proxy.ftp", "YourIPAddressToProxy");
pref("network.proxy.ftp_port", 8080);
pref("network.proxy.gopher", "YourIPAddressToProxy");
pref("network.proxy.gopher_port", 8080);
pref("network.proxy.http", "YourIPAddressToProxy");
pref("network.proxy.http_port", 0);
pref("network.proxy.ssl", "YourIPAddressToProxy");
pref("network.proxy.ssl_port", 0);
pref("network.proxy.socks", "YourIPAddressToSocks");
pref("network.proxy.socks_port", 0);
pref("network.proxy.socks_version", 5);
pref("network.proxy.socks_remote_dns", false);
pref("network.proxy.no_proxies_on", "localhost, 127.0.0.1, .yourlocal.domains");


Step 3
It's also possible to setup the global default homepage*, this time we edit /etc/firefox/pref/firefox.js. In the terminal type:

sudo gedit /etc/firefox/pref/firefox.js

Add the following lines:

//Setup Home...
pref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://www.google.com");
pref("browser.startup.homepage_reset", "http://www.google.com");

Changing the urls appropreately. Save the file(s) and reboot.

*This step might not work as expected in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) It's a known bug: Bug Report

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For a while now I've been working on an anoying problem. I've been trying to get the sound to work using flash on a thin client. The sound would play on the server instead of sounding on the thin client. Flash is so important to us that a sollution needed to be found otherwise LTSP would'nt have been a solution for us. I thought an upgrade to Edubuntu would solve all our problems, it didn't and in a final ditched effort I managed to find the following fix:


Step 1
bring up the terminal and type:

wget http://pulseaudio.vdbonline.net/libflashsupport/libflashsupport_1.0~2219-1_i386.deb

Step 2

sudo dpkg -i libflashsupport_1.0~2219-1_i386.deb

Step 3
Close the terminal and reboot the server


There we have it, a 3 month problem put to bed in 2 lines of code! This silly problem just suddenly disappeared. This is one of those things in Ubuntu that should just work!

I've recently been made aware (thanks to Tom!) that this fix does not work on 64bit versions of Ubuntu. This is tried and tested on 7.10 32bit.

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