Bug 829964 - incorrect user agent string
Summary: incorrect user agent string
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: firefox
Version: 17
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Gecko Maintainer
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2012-06-07 21:53 UTC by Russ
Modified: 2012-06-11 12:39 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-06-11 12:39:51 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Russ 2012-06-07 21:53:09 UTC
Description of problem:
An incorrect user agent string is shown for Firefox 12

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
12

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install firefox
2. check user agent at http://whatsmyuseragent.com/
3. verify user agent
  
Actual results:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0

Expected results:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0

Additional info:

We need the most current user agent string in Firefox. It is bad enough that Linux users are usually easier to track by websites due to their unique user agent strings. The problem does not need to be amplified by the use of an older Firefox in the user agent string.

Comment 1 Russ 2012-06-10 00:01:13 UTC
Just upgraded to firefox.x86_64 0:13.0-1.fc17. It STILL shows as Firefox 10 in the user agent string. It looks like Fedora users are permanently stuck with Firefox 10, at least as far as what the web servers it connects to are concerned.

Comment 2 Martin Stransky 2012-06-11 08:26:10 UTC
what does the about say about your browser and UA string? I can't reproduce it. Do you really have the firefox 12/13 installed?

Comment 3 Martin Stransky 2012-06-11 08:29:46 UTC
The about page means that you just type about: to the URL bar.

Comment 4 Russ 2012-06-11 12:18:27 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> what does the about say about your browser and UA string? I can't reproduce
> it. Do you really have the firefox 12/13 installed?

Interesting. . .
If the issue is not present for you then it is likely a problem with a Firefox config on my machine.

I'm am not going to waste time filing a bug if it wasn't really Firefox 13 installed. The about page contains too little for me. But I did, however, look at menu item "Help > About Firefox" first after I saw the old user agent string in my web server logs.

More info since you seemed not to believe me about the browser version:

about:
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0

[root@host russ]# rpm -q firefox
firefox-13.0-1.fc17.x86_64

Your "about:" comment got me thinking, however. So I went to the proper place whre you SHOULD have sent me: "about:config". 

About:config shows that "general.useragent.override" is "user set." It seems that the setting was changed by a Firefox plugin without my knowledge. The package update did not update the user agent string due to that setting. So that resolves the issue for me personally. 

But a bug is there in that the "about:" page should really show the ACTUAL installed version, and not a fake user agent string from a plugin. If there is a manually set user agent then it should be shown along with the actual version. I am also somewhat troubled over the fact that a plugin can override the user agent without me knowing about it, then leaving it that way permanently. 

Both issues are with Mozilla, and not Fedora.

Comment 5 Martin Stransky 2012-06-11 12:39:51 UTC
Yeah, I didn't notice but "Windows NT 6.1;" in the UA looks wrong too. Okay, closing as WORKSFORME.


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