Package: chromium Severity: wishlist Version: 90.0.4430.212-1
I recently looked into how to enterprise-deploy chromium on large scale networks and how to best fiddle with chromium's master_preferences (initial_preferences, see #992178) -> user Preferences dealings and the Chromium's policy system.
Chromium does not seem to be very admin friendly regarding overriding upstream/distro-maintained initial preferences (i.e. the master_preferences file). A site admin can only deploy Debian's chromium by fiddling with the distro version of /etc/chromium/master_preferences (i.e. by hand or by script or by some config management tool).
So, I (as a site-admin) cannot provision/modify Chromium's first-run preferences by dropping some package file to some location and let my master_preferences file override the distro maintainer's master_preferences file. Instead I need to fiddle with chromium' s /etc/chromium/master_preferences conffile. As I prefer rolling out changes via extra DEB packages rather then tinkering with sensible config defaults, I see scope for improvement here.
(And yes, I have tried out Chromium's recommended policies, but settings in master_preferences after having been copied over to ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences always take precendence over recommended policies. Recommended policies get ignored for settings already pre-configured via master_preferences.
My suggesting now for Debian's chromium is:* Read distro-config from /usr/share/chromium/master_preferences (or .../initial_preferences, see #992178) * Allow admin to place a file into /etc/chromium/master_preferences (or /etc/chromium/initial_preferences, see #992178 again)
If upstream gets involved with this, one could even consider:* Read upstream config from /usr/share/chromium/master_preferences (or .../initial_preferences, see #992178) * Merge-in distro config from /etc/chromium/master_preferences (or .../initial_preferences, see #992178) * Additionally merge in site-admin's individual JSON files from /etc/chromium/initial_preferences.d/ in alphanumerical order
Thanks for maintaining chromium and for your time reading this! Mike -- DAS-NETZWERKTEAM c\o Technik- und Ökologiezentrum Eckernförde Mike Gabriel, Marienthaler Str. 17, 24340 Eckernförde mobile: +49 (1520) 1976 148 landline: +49 (4351) 850 8940 GnuPG Fingerprint: 9BFB AEE8 6C0A A5FF BF22 0782 9AF4 6B30 2577 1B31 mail: mike.gabr...@das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de
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