Can't change Firefox home page in Ubuntu MATE

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Sorry but I think the importance should be set to high.

The only solution is to change to desired location here: /usr/lib/firefox/ubuntumate.cfg

You can delete too this line in the file and firefox will works like it should

I have that line in a terminal.How can I change or delete it.

How to delete the "sticky" homepage:

Open a terminal window (ctrl-alt-t) and run:
gksudo pluma /usr/lib/firefox/ubuntumate.cfg

Enter your password, delete home page configuration line, save, exit.
Finally, set your homepage from preferences menu within firefox.

this is now occurring in gnome 17.04.

This also affects 17.04 Beta 2 apparently according to this review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-dVhs6YZMc

This is what we currently have set. Ubuntu's default Firefox overrides the default homepage so this sets it back to the default. But you get the same bug if you set a different webpage for broser.startup.homepage. (Ubuntu Mate uses http://start.ubuntu-mate.org/ ) I also duplicated this bug with Firefox on Windows.

$ cat /usr/lib/firefox/ubuntu-gnome.cfg
//
pref("browser.startup.homepage", "about:home");

$ $ cat defaults/pref/all-ubuntu-gnome.js
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0);
pref("general.config.filename", "ubuntu-gnome.cfg");

To be clear, that last file is stored at /usr/lib/firefox/defaults/pref/all-ubuntu-gnome.js

This can be fixed by using defaultPref instead of pref

https://developer.mozilla.org/Firefox/Enterprise_deployment

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-gnome-default-settings - 17.04.3

---------------
ubuntu-gnome-default-settings (17.04.3) zesty; urgency=medium

  * Use defaultPref instead of pref to allow users to change the
    Firefox homepage (LP: #1605887)

 -- Jeremy Bicha <email address hidden> Mon, 10 Apr 2017 05:50:30 -0400

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-mate-settings - 17.04.7

---------------
ubuntu-mate-settings (17.04.7) zesty; urgency=medium

  * Use defaultPref instead of pref to allow users to change the Firefox
    homepage (LP: #1605887)

 -- Martin Wimpress <email address hidden> Mon, 10 Apr 2017 11:06:43 +0100

Easy work-around for a single user system:

sudo vi /usr/lib/firefox/ubuntumate.cfg
Set the pref value (2nd string) to the desired home page.

For me, the result was this:
pref("browser.startup.homepage", "file:///home/elkins/www/html/index.html");

FYI, I ran into this bug again on the current 17.10 beta of Ubuntu MATE.

I just checked /usr/lib/firefox/ubuntumate.cfg in Artful and instead of

defaultPref("browser.startup.homepage", "https://start.ubuntu-mate.org");

it is

pref("browser.startup.homepage", "https://start.ubuntu-mate.org");

Definitely a regression here, but it should be easy to fix.

Yup, still (or again) present in Artful beta.

Fwiw, see bug 1721965 for the regression in Artful.

This bug is back in version 17.10 Ubuntu Mate.

why is this invalid if it is still happening today? please let us know?

- Bugs against "ubuntu-mate" may be invalidated by the bug supervisor when they can be filed towards a specific package. (See after comment #11 for when that happened)
- Yakkety is EOL (end of life) and won't be possible to update that release anymore.

Please see bug 1721965 for Artful (17.10), as a fix is committed but not yet released.

Still a problem in 2021…