I spend my days in heavily Linux-y environment. My main machine is a Linux box, my dev box is Linux, my client-test box and my server-test box are all Linux boxes. Woo-hoo! I can run firefox on any of my boxes...or can I?
Those of you who like to skip ahead to the end know the answer to this: Of course not! If I am running firefox on my main box, and am ssh-ed in to (for example) my client-text box, and try to run firefox there, surprise! Firefox, in its infinite hatefulness, decides that I must really want to run a firefox remote window in the firefox back on my main box. I couldn't possibly want to have a distinct instance of firefox on my client-test box, now could I? If, for example, my client-test box has TWO NICs, and one of them connects (via another box) to my server box, and I want to access my server box via the client box? Without all that tedious mucking about with routing tables (which is a hate all its own)? If, for example, the client-test, server-test, and intermediary box are all on a private subnet that I cannot reach from my main box? GRRRRR! Fortunately, the hatefulness is only about 99%, because the firefox command exposed on the command line is really a shell script that wraps around the REAL firefox command, and does the evil remote thing. So it was not too painful to hack it up to allow me to opt out of the whole evil remote thing, but: 1. What a pian! 2. The next time I upgrade I will need to reapply this fix. Grrr! Why can't firefox support this behaviour? I can understand not having it on by default, as I assume the thinking was that this behaviour would confuse the fewest number of people, but come on! Firefox is all about customisability, and yet there is no convenient hook for disabling this behaviour that I could find. It took me all of five lines of shell hacking to add it in, so we are not talking rocket science here. Firefox, burn in hell forever! -- Timothy Knox <mailto:t...@thelbane.com> The one thing I've learned about freedom of expression is that you really ought to keep that sort of thing to yourself. -- Scott Adams, _I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot_
