Firefox extension that uses native messaging does not work

[mickours]

I tried for a long time now to make browserpass and gnome-extensions firefox plugins to work in NixOS without success. I find out that these two extensions are using the Native Messaging interface, that is used by Firefox to interact with local applications. So, looking at the Firefox debug console, I get this error:

No such native application com.dannyvankooten.browserpass

It seems that the extension manifest was not found.

I finally find out where it comes from, thanks to this issue #33748. This comment is giving the problem cause and the workaround: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/33748#issuecomment-356978749

Basically, the problem comes from Firefox looking for a path in /usr/lib/ that does not exist in NixOS and the workaround is to create a link in the user's home with:

mkdir ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/
ln -s $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A chrome-gnome-shell)/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/org.gnome.chrome_gnome_shell.json ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/
ln -s $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A browserpass)/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.dannyvankooten.browserpass.json ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/

A bug was open in the Firefox side two years ago, but maybe a small patch would do the trick ;)

I'm opening a new issue because the previous one was too specific on browserpass and closed because of another issue with gpg that was fixed.

[mickours]

I'm not sure but it seems that the path where the manifest is looked up is set here.

Does anyone that know the code of Firefox can confirm?

[jtojnar]

You can add something like nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableBrowserpass = true; and nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableGnomeExtensions = true; to your configuration.nix. You can even add arbitrary nmh packages by installing (pkgs.firefox.override { extraNativeMessagingHosts = [ pkgs.gnomeExtensions.gsconnect ]; }).

[mickours]

Sorry if I wasn't clear but this is the problem actually, both options were already set:

nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableBrowserpass = true; 
nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableGnomeExtensions = true; 

But the extensions were not working and Firefox was still complaining that it can't find the extensions with errors like:

No such native application com.dannyvankooten.browserpass

[hedning]

Just to be sure, are you using firefox-bin? That's the upstream build from mozilla and isn't patched to detect the nixpkgs config.

[mickours]

Just to be sure, are you using firefox-bin? That's the upstream build from mozilla and isn't patched to detect the nixpkgs config.

I'm using the firefox package that contains the nix-support folder:

$ realpath $(which firefox)
/nix/store/3d10spgq6fc573ih4wpgjqn7x2iyr8b3-firefox-62.0/bin/firefox
$ l /nix/store/3d10spgq6fc573ih4wpgjqn7x2iyr8b3-firefox-62.0
total 16
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096  1 janv.  1970 bin
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 4096  1 janv.  1970 lib
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096  1 janv.  1970 nix-support
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 4096  1 janv.  1970 share

With NixOS unstable (but the problem is here for a long time now):

$ nixos-version 
19.03pre153158.7df10f388da (Koi)

[coreyoconnor]

See also https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/437248

I've done some tracing on this: Firefox is not looking in MOZ_SYSTEM_DIR for native messaging hosts. I suspect there was a change related to policies that disabled this.

Documentation is sparse on all fronts. I haven't determined what the correct directory should be. One reference said use share instead of lib. That did not work for me.

A temp workaround that did resolve the issue was to copy the manifest jsons under ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts.

[mickours]

Note that the workaround is not resistant to updates. Here is a better implementation using home-manager:

{
    imports = [
      "${builtins.fetchTarball https://github.com/rycee/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz}/nixos"
    ];

    nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableBrowserpass = true;
    nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableGnomeExtensions = true;

    home-manager.users.MYUSER = {
        home.file.".mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.dannyvankooten.browserpass.json".source = "${pkgs.browserpass}/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.dannyvankooten.browserpass.json";
        home.file.".mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/org.gnome.chrome_gnome_shell.json".source = "${pkgs.chrome-gnome-shell}/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/org.gnome.chrome_gnome_shell.json";
    };
}

[coreyoconnor]

Nice! Thanks for the tip.

The post-update issue, in my case, was observed as a "error" reported on accessing https://extensions.gnome.org/ .

[glasserc]

I decided to open https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1538954 to surface this discussion within Mozilla because the patch shipped in Nixpkgs only covers the firefox derivation (users of firefox-bin are left out in the cold).

[infinisil]

Oh btw, I added better instructions to browserpass for Nix/NixOS recently, in https://github.com/browserpass/browserpass/pull/308: https://github.com/browserpass/browserpass#configuring-browserpass-on-nixos--for-nix

[worldofpeace]

This came up when I was helping someone on mastodon https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/103631567654364956. We need to get some sort of warning or information about firefox vs firefox-bin, and in particular that the native messaging stuff doesn't work as expected.

[wakest]

thanks @worldofpeace for walking me through that. I was very confused why it wasn't working and had not even thought about checking with a different install of firefox. using the non bin version it now works as expected.

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[milahu]

Basically, the problem comes from Firefox looking for a path in /usr/lib/ that does not exist in NixOS

we could make that path exist ...

I've done some tracing on this: Firefox is not looking in MOZ_SYSTEM_DIR for native messaging hosts. I suspect there was a change related to policies that disabled this.

... or use a ld_preload library to resolve fstat/open syscalls from /usr/lib to $MOZ_SYSTEM_DIR >: D i made something similar (rewrite fstat/open syscalls) here

$ strace firefox 2>&1 | grep /usr/lib 
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib", 0x7ffee5d75160, 0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib32", 0x7ffee5d75160, 0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib64", 0x7ffee5d75160, 0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

or use a ld_preload library

edit: no, firefox is statically linked

→ maybe there is a fork of firefox, where either MOZ_SYSTEM_DIR is parsed, or which is dynamically linked, so we can use ld_preload

[stale[bot]]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[eddyb]

So I have firefox (not firefox-bin, so this is unrelated to any of that discussion above) from nix-env (I've been meaning to switch to home-manager on this machine too, just didn't get around it) and I was a bit confused regarding the Plasma integration addon.

This seems to have done the job though, so the note on the wiki seems incorrect:

$ ls -l $(dirname $(readlink $(which firefox)))/../lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/
total 0

$ nano ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix 

$ cat ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix
{
  firefox.enablePlasmaBrowserIntegration = true;

  # ... the rest of my `config.nix` file ...
}

$ nix-env -iA nixos.firefox
replacing old 'firefox-103.0.2'
installing 'firefox-103.0.2'
this path will be fetched (0.57 MiB download, 4.82 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/6c79h7gb5gvgpd4938yxg2zdffbd3h2j-firefox-103.0.2
copying path '/nix/store/6c79h7gb5gvgpd4938yxg2zdffbd3h2j-firefox-103.0.2' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/bqgyzgm7xpn5pgd9rnx3w7xrxw0m46ip-user-environment.drv'...

$ ls -l $(dirname $(readlink $(which firefox)))/../lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/
total 9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 152 Jan  1  1970 org.kde.plasma.browser_integration.json -> /nix/store/s718ag183gd8chm757gzy49i1wdh306p-plasma-browser-integration-5.25.4/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/org.kde.plasma.browser_integration.json

So it seems like ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix plays all the roles of nixpkgs.config but for per-user nix-env - which makes perfect sense, but I wasn't sure until I tried. I assume that it would be easier to just add firefox to my system-wide packages (since then e.g. enablePlasmaBrowserIntegration is already automatically set).

Now to restart Firefox and see if it really works!

EDIT: yupp, finally have Plasma Browser Integration working in Firefox! (I think I only ever had it working in Chromium accidentally because I had that installed system-wide from ages ago, hah)

[huantianad]

Is enablePlasmaBrowserIntegration expected to work withlibrewolf?

[pasqui23]

Is enablePlasmaBrowserIntegration expected to work withlibrewolf?

Yes, it should just be config.librewolf.enablePlasmaBrowserIntegration=true if it weren't for this bug.

[huantianad]

I managed to get it working on librewolf by overriding the package instead of using the config option, see #233568

[SuperSandro2000]

I think this commit https://github.com/SuperSandro2000/nixpkgs/commit/cb6a879f145aa8361c959f3d93bf07b5da3b6e53 fixes this. Can someone confirm this?

[SuperSandro2000]

@K900 @mweinelt what do you think about this?

I think this might be only necessary for users of firefox-bin thought.

[mickours]

FYI the workaround described here was not necessary in anymore in 23.05 but after updating to 23.11 browserpass seems to be broken again. The debug console of the extension shows:

Error: No such native application com.github.browserpass.native

So I've re-enabled the workaround but the native extension name has changed. The new version is:

home.file.".mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.github.browserpass.native.json".source = "${pkgs.browserpass}/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.github.browserpass.native.json";

[SuperSandro2000]

Please test #303562

[mickours]

Sorry. I just tried, and the problem is still there even after restarting firefox. Same error:

Error: No such native application com.github.browserpass.native

I do have in my config:

programs.browserpass.enable = true;
programs.firefox.enable = true;

[honza]

FYI the workaround described here was not necessary in anymore in 23.05 but after updating to 23.11 browserpass seems to be broken again. The debug console of the extension shows:

Error: No such native application com.github.browserpass.native

So I've re-enabled the workaround but the native extension name has changed. The new version is:

home.file.".mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.github.browserpass.native.json".source = "${pkgs.browserpass}/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/com.github.browserpass.native.json";

This works for me.