Add-on signing issue with signed add-ons
Hello, I am running Firefox version 3.6.28 on Mac OS X, I cannot upgrade to any newer versions.
Recently, I have began encountering a problem where I cannot install any Add-ons. I get a window saying:
"Error
Firefox could not install the file at
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/.....(differs with the add-on being installed)
because: Signing could not be verified. -260"
I have read about the new signing rules but I am downloading from the Mozilla Add-on site and the Add-on's are for my version of Firefox and say that they are signed.
I started having this problem a little under a week ago after I installed the latest version of TenFourX, a Firefox alternative. It updated my Add-ons or extensions for its use and in the actual Firefox application deleted my bookmarks, thankfully not my backups. I didn't like it doing that so I uninstalled it and thats when I found that Firefox won't install any Add-ons anymore. I was able to install Add-ons a few months ago.
I have reinstalled Firefox, deleted the profile folder, and preferences, and I still have no luck, no matter what Add-on I try I get the same error. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
PS. I tried adding my Troubleshooting Information, but I could not as Firefox tried to install an Add-On to do so which gave me the same error.
All Replies (10)
It is possible to download the installers and install manually. I see that even older versions of add-ons are signed now, but you can download the installer for the older version, by right-clicking the button and choosing Save. I found that I had to remove the META-INF folder from the .xpi archive before I could install. Install manually with drag and drop into the extensions window.
Unfortunately, because 3.6 is no longer supported, we aren't going to be able to do much to support you here. We also do not support tenfourfox. We can't guarantee that add-ons will work with such old versions, nor should you use such old versions.
Thanks for both of the answers, in regards to finitarry's responce, I have done as you suggested, but I still get an error, and when I remove the folder you said, and recompress the .xmi file, I get another error, -204, istall script not found. I have no idea what happened, I would not have even tried the newer version of tenfourfox had I known it would do this, the older versions didn't do anything like his. I understand support for this version is limited, thanks anyway to those that have or may answer, I'm going to continue working on it.
derekallthumbs said
... and recompress the .xmi file, I get another error, -204, istall script not found. I have no idea what happened ...
Don't use compression when repacking the XPI file.
You can download and save the XPI extension's file. Open the XPI file (ZIP archive) in an archive manager and remove the META-INF folder that stores the certificate manifest files. That should make the file work if you install it locally.
Note that most archive managers allow to make changes to files in the archive without the need to unpack and repack the archive, so find one that allow this.
Modified by cor-el
cor-el, That is a bit of a problem with Mac OS. I found only one archive handler that allows removal of something (and perhaps editing and replacing) and resaving the archive. That is BetterZip, and it is not free. To me, the price is reasonable and well worth it, but most people prefer free stuff.
If you're on Windows, try using 7-Zip. http://www.7-zip.org/
The OP is using Mac OS. There are not a whole lot of archive handlers for Mac OS.
It is also a PPC Mac, so that makes it likely more difficult.
OS X is based on Linux/Unix and I don't know if there are file managers available that allow to open ZIP archives easily like you can do on Linux.
Is it possible to use the Terminal to handle .xpi files? I used it once to unarchive then rearchive omni.ja from Firefox and that worked. If there is no other way to extract META-INF from an .xpi file and then save it again, maybe that would work. The code used for omni.ja:
Unarchive omni.ja
Use Terminal and this code: unzip ~/Desktop/omni.ja -d ~/Temporary
This assumes that omni.ja is on the desktop and is to be dumped to the Temporary directory.
Archive to omni.ja
cd ~/Temporary zip -qr9XD omni.ja *
The archive will be created in the same directory (Temporary). The "*" means that everything in that directory will be put into the archive.