InformAction Forums

Hello all, thank you for making a good program to help us all be more secure. Unfortunately I am having an issue with NoScript now. About 20 times now, a site that I have whitelisted, goes back to being blacklisted. Is there a maximum size for the whitelist? If so, how do I increase it?

AFAIK the hard limit is 1 MB and there is no way around this. If you remove some other sites from your whitelist does this other site still unable to get added?

Thank you for your response. I did not know about the arbitrary 1MB hard limit, nor do I understand the logical necessity for this number. Unfortunately, the second part of your response reveals a slight misunderstanding of my issue with NoScript. I am able to successfully whitelist any site I want, but only temporarily. After a variable period of time, some whitelisted sites are removed from the whitelist.

Brutal_Moose wrote:I did not know about the arbitrary 1MB hard limit, nor do I understand the logical necessity for this number.

The NoScript whitelist is stored in the Mozilla prefs system (prefs.js) which must be read/written synchronously at various times so Mozilla capped the maximum size of prefs for performance reasons. (There are plans to gradually narrow the maximum size of each pref down to 4 KB.)

Brutal_Moose wrote:I am able to successfully whitelist any site I want, but only temporarily. After a varable period of time, some whitelisted sites are removed from the whitelist.

Yes, that's what I thought you meant. My question still stands..

barbaz wrote:Yes, that's what I thought you meant. My question still stands..

I will try to further clarify my answer, and if this is still unclear to you, please reframe your question, so that we may understand eachother. Your question seems to assume that I have a concrete problem whitelisting sites. This is not technically the case. I can whitelist any site I want, and it will stay that way. Separate from that successful use of the NoScript program, sometimes when I open my web browser, sites that I have whitelisted in the past have become re-blacklisted.

Ah, I thought your changes were working but consistently being discarded when the browser restarts or tries to save prefs.js, sorry.

Do you have a large whitelist? IOW, if you go to NoScript Options > Whitelist > Export (*not* the one on the very bottom), how big is the resulting file? EDIT And how big is it if you remove the [UNTRUSTED] section?

1) I do not understand why you yelled "EDIT" at me in your instruction.

2) I followed your instruction, and the size is 99k. A far cry from the 1MB limit that you meantioned. What do you think this could mean?

Thank you for your help.

Brutal_Moose wrote:1) I do not understand why you yelled "EDIT" at me in your instruction.

Not yelling at you (or yelling at all), just indicating that I add that after the fact.

Brutal_Moose wrote:2) I followed your instruction, and the size is 99k. A far cry from the 1MB limit that you meantioned. What do you think this could mean?

That it's not due to hitting a maximum size. Extension conflict maybe?
Test: Please create a clean profile from scratch. Install only NoScript latest development build, leaving all the defaults.
Does the problem still exist?
If not, what if you then import your NS settings into the clean profile using the Import and Export buttons *on the very bottom* of NS Options?
If that still doesn't reproduce the problem... try Standard Diagnostic (leaving NS enabled) to isolate and correct the real cause.

Let us know, thanks.

Thank you for the ideas. I will take your advice and reinstall it. I am going to be formatting my hard drive and upgrading to Linux Ubuntu 15.10 in a couple of weeks anyway, I'll consider that my reinstallation.

Reinstalling Firefox will not help, profiles are kept separately from the installation. If when you upgrade to Ubuntu 15.10 you will *not* be keeping your ~/.mozilla folder (or at least not replacing it immediately), then you'll get a clean profile with which to perform the tests, albeit that's a rather extreme way to obtain a clean profile . The easier way is to start Firefox with the -profilemanager command line option.

re-blacklisted

Are the sites in question actually being added to the "blacklist" as opposed to just no longer appearing on the "whitelist"?

Does this happen to any & all sites? Only certain sites?