[SOLVED] Firefox 60.5esr upgrade on 14.2 (both 32bit and 64bit) broke Netflix.

theodore.s · 02-03-2019, 07:22 AM

Hi,

After the last upgrade from Firefox 60.4esr to 60.5esr, Netflix does not work anymore. Although the menu pages are ok, there is the "Firefox is installing components..." message and videos do not play.
This happened in two installations, a i686 one and a x86_64 one. Also tried with fresh Firefox profile, no luck. Any ideas?

Also, any idea where i could find the previous Slackware package?

theodore.s · 02-03-2019, 07:33 AM

As a last option, i downloaded the Firefox 65.0 binary, unpacked in a temporary directory and tried Netflix. The message about upgrading appeared once, and then everything worked.
Then, tried with the 60.5esr version again, assuming that 65.0 upgraded successfully the widevine plugin. And i was right, now 60.5esr also works. It looks that for some reason, 60.5esr couldn't upgrade the plugin. Both runs used the same user profile with all addons enabled.

cwizardone · 02-03-2019, 07:35 AM

I'm surprised it worked at all.
Try removing any check marks on the tracking options under the privacy/security heading in Preferences.
If the ESR versions have the option, be sure to check mark the DRM option, which, if there, should be
under the "General" heading.

theodore.s · 02-03-2019, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwizardone

I'm surprised it worked at all.

Well, i started using Netflix a few months ago and never had any problems with Firefox on Slackware, it worked fine right from the start after enabling the DRM option. As you can see above, it looks that it was a plugin upgrade issue.

cwizardone · 02-03-2019, 07:48 AM

Ships passing in the night, I guess.

I was typing my last reply as you were posting message #2.

At one time I did have Firefox-ESR working with Netflix and then an odd thing happened. I was watching a TV series and everything was fine. The episode ended and as the next episode started the video stopped and an error message was shown. Nothing I did helped. It just refused to stream from any service I tried.
Finally, I extracted Mozilla's firefox-whateverversion.tar.bz2 on my hard drive and it has been working ever since with Netflix, Amazon Prime and NBC.
Recently I did tried the latest -ESR, but, again, it wouldn't work.

theodore.s · 02-03-2019, 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwizardone

Finally, I extracted Mozilla's firefox-whateverversion.tar.bz2 on my hard drive and it has been working ever since with Netflix, Amazon Prime and NBC.
Recently I did tried the latest -ESR, but, again, it wouldn't work.

These two tries (downloaded and ESR), were using the same firefox profile? In my case, it was the same profile and it looks that the downloaded version did the upgrade that the esr couldn't do.

BTW, also tried the same solution in my second system (x86_64), worked fine there too.

Pixxt · 02-03-2019, 08:06 AM

Amazon Prime Video did it for me, it would not work with ESR I had to download Firefox 65 to get playback to work again. Even after I tried going through a VPN and spoofing my user-id in browser.

hitest · 02-03-2019, 10:28 AM

Thanks for the posts! Same thing happened to me. I've installed Chrome 72 using the google-chrome.Slackbuild located in /extra.
I'll go back to using Firefox for Netflix when this gets sorted out.

SpiderTux · 02-03-2019, 11:55 AM

looks like Firefox 60.5.0esr is trying to download a wrong widevine version, but there is a workaround:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...?bug=921121#15

P.S. I did not try it

theodore.s · 02-03-2019, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpiderTux

looks like Firefox 60.5.0esr is trying to download a wrong widevine version, but there is a workaround:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...?bug=921121#15

P.S. I did not try it

Yes, i can confirm that. This also means that this thread is not exactly solved, as after a while 60.5 esr downloads again the wrong widevine version.

The workaround mentioned about is manually downloading and installing the plugin (which is what i did by running 65.0), but this will not keep the esr version from replacing the right version with the wrong version again after some time or by manually asking for an update. Just tested that and indeed, 60.5 esr keeps downloading 1.4.8.1008 instead of 4.10.1196.0.

As mentioned in the above debian.org thread, the actual problem is a misconfiguration of a Mozilla service, not a bug in the software and it is not Slackware specific.

hitest · 02-13-2019, 07:14 PM

The latest update to FF in Slackware64-current has resolved the Netflix issue for me.

Code:

Wed Feb 13 23:01:59 UTC 2019
l/giflib-5.1.6-x86_64-1.txz:  Upgraded.
n/getmail-5.11-x86_64-1.txz:  Upgraded.
x/xterm-344-x86_64-1.txz:  Upgraded.
xap/mozilla-firefox-60.5.1esr-x86_64-1.txz:  Upgraded.
  This release contains security fixes and improvements.
  For more information, see:
    https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefoxESR.html
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-05/
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-05/#CVE-2018-18356
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-05/#CVE-2019-5785
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-05/#CVE-2018-18335
  (* Security fix *)
+--------------------------+

cwizardone · 02-13-2019, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hitest

The latest update to FF in Slackware64-current has resolved the Netflix issue for me......

Installed it and gave it a spin, and, yes, it will stream Netflix, but not Amazon Prime. Firefox-65.0.1, on the other hand, will do both.

theodore.s · 02-14-2019, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hitest

The latest update to FF in Slackware64-current has resolved the Netflix issue for me.

Yes, it works for me too. It downloads Widevine version 1.4.9.1088.