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Firefox search is resolving to IP instead of hostname (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by root@lemmy.world to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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I have a SearXNG instance running locally, and I have a proxy entry for this (search.home). When I go to https://search.home/ in Firefox, it works as expected and brings me to SearXNG, however if I try adding this as my default search, it instead resolves to the IP and not the hostname, which fails because the IP does not have a cert on it and it tries to hit it with https (as would work with the hostname).

This works in Firefox mobile, and every other web browser I've tried on desktop, just not Firefox for some reason. I've tried various about:config changes but so far no luck. Anyone else have a workaround for this? It would be nice if Firefox showed you what it actually has saved for the url/hostname/IP of the search engine in the Search section of the Settings, but sadly it just has the name and shortcut listed.

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[–] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you looked at the OpenSearch Description file for your instance? It might be generated with an IP by SearXNG not knowing the hostname. The URL is probably https://search.home/opensearch.xml.

If you want to examine the search engines in your browser profile, they're stored in a json file compressed with a mozilla specific variant of lz4. The file is search.json.mozlz4 and can be unpacked to json with lz4json.

[–] root@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks! The output of the xml is as follows

<OpenSearchDescription>
<ShortName>SearXNG</ShortName>
<LongName>SearXNG metasearch</LongName>
<Description>
SearXNG is a metasearch engine that respects your privacy.
</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image type="image/png">
https://192.168.2.20:8080/static/themes/simple/img/favicon.png?60321eeb6e2f478f0e5704529308c594d5924246
</Image>
<Url rel="results" type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://192.168.2.20:8080/search?q=%7BsearchTerms%7D"/>
<Url rel="suggestions" type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="https://192.168.2.20:8080/autocompleter?q=%7BsearchTerms%7D"/>
<Url rel="self" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" method="GET" template="https://192.168.2.20:8080/opensearch.xml"/>
<Query role="example" searchTerms="SearXNG"/>
<moz:SearchForm>https://192.168.2.20:8080/search</moz:SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>

It looks like it's set to use https://192.168.2.20:8080/ for some reason. https://search.home/ will resolve fine but using https with the underlying IP will not.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

https://docs.searxng.org/admin/settings/settings_server.html says you need to set base_url, and that by default it's set to $SEARXNG_URL.

however, https://docs.searxng.org/admin/installation-docker.html#searxng-searxng says that if you are running it under docker the environment variable which controls base_url in the config is actually BASE_URL rather than SEARXNG_URL.

(possibly whichever variable it is is currently empty, which might make it construct a URL based on the IP address it is configured to listen on.)

[–] root@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're a legend. Changing SEARXNG_HOSTNAME in my .env file solved it.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Changing SEARXNG_HOSTNAME in my .env file solved it.

nice. (but, i assume you actually mean SEARXNG_URL? either that or you're deploying it under some environment other than one described in the official repo, because the string HOSTNAME does not appear anywhere in the searxng repo.)

[–] root@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The file in question can be found here

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I see. What a mess.

The instructions at https://docs.searxng.org/admin/installation-docker.html mention that the docker image (which that page tells you to just pull and run) has its "sources hosted at" https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker and has instructions for running it the image without docker-compose.

But, the Dockerfile source for the image is actually in the main repo at https://github.com/searxng/searxng/blob/master/Dockerfile and the searxng-docker repo actually contains a docker-compose.yaml and different instructions for running it under compose instead.

Anyway, in the docker-compose deployment, SEARXNG_BASE_URL (yet another name for this... neither SEARXNG_URL or BASE_URL, but apparently it sets base_url from it) is constructed from SEARXNG_HOSTNAME on line 58 here: https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker/blob/a899b72a507074d8618d32d82f5355e23ecbe477/docker-compose.yaml#L58

If I had a github account associated with this pseudonym I might open an issue or PR about this, but I don't and it isn't easy to make one anymore 😢