With Mojave, Firefox & Chrome cannot access the Web; Safari & Opera Can

[John Varela]

The title says it all. I upgraded to MacOS Mojave and now neither Firefox nor Google Chrome can reach any Web site. Firefox says "Unable to Connect" and Chrome says "This site can't be reached". Safari and Opera don't have this problem.

I have two user accounts on this iMac, one Standard for normal use and one Administrative because you have to have one. Only the Standard account has this problem. Firefox and Chrome behave normally in the Admin account. Ditto for my wife's Macbook pro: it was upgraded to Mojave and has no browser problems.

The problem is limited to two browsers on one account on one installation. What could Firefox and Chrome have in common that would be on only one account? (Surely it's not one problem on Firefox and a different problem on Chrome both triggered by the OS upgrade.)

Note: I have Adblock Plus and Ghostery on Firefox (so does my wife's computer) but no extensions or add-ons on Chrome. I uninstalled Chrome and reinstalled; no help.

 

[Cheryl]

I had a similar problem with Mail on a brand new machine - after I migrated my files. What fixed it was downloading and installing the latest combo update.
Mojave combo update - https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1987?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[John Varela]

I had a similar problem with Mail on a brand new machine - after I migrated my files. What fixed it was downloading and installing the latest combo update.
Mojave combo update - https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1987?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Unfortunately, the OS update to 10.14.2 didn't work. Firefox and Google Chrome still can't find Web sites; Safari and Opera can.

The update to 10.14.2 did, apparently, fix a different and less important problem, which may be related to the Firefox/Chrome problem. In Safari, sometimes the ancestry.com site (and only the ancestry.com site) would fail to open, hanging up with the progress bar about ⅛ of the way from start. When ancestry.com did succeed in opening, it was unable to display "Gallery" photos and documents, which rendered it kind of useless. Yesterday, what had been an intermittent problem seemed to have become a hard error. Meanwhile, Opera has been refusing to open ancestry.com because of some problem with security at the site not being up to date.

With 10.14.2, several tries to launch ancestry.com in Safari have worked, with only a momentary pause of the progress bar where it yesterday was hanging up. Documents and photos display correctly. Opera still refuses to open ancestry.com for the same reason.

 

[Cheryl]

Do the browsers still behave in Admin? If so, there is something not loading in your standard user account. Check the settings under parental controls. There maybe something in default that is preventing all sites to load for you.

 

[John Varela]

Problem solved, maybe. While lying awake unable to go to sleep last night, it came to me. Check the settings in Little Snitch. Sure enough, Little Snitch was denying any outgoing connections from both Firefox and Google Chrome. See attached screen grab. Little Snitch says there was a problem with the processes' code signatures. I have taken what seems a reasonable chance and removed the blocks, and now both seem to be working. In fact I am logged on right now via Firefox. I have no idea why these two blocks appeared at the same time that the system was upgraded to MacOS 10.14.1. Just a coincidence?

Thanks for your assistance.

 

[SGilbert]

FWIW, I consider myself pretty Mac savy. That being said, Little Snitch threw me for a loop! It is WAY overly complicated and not intuitive.
I have dumped it in favor of a small, free app called Radio Silence. You might give it a try.

 

[John Varela]

FWIW, I consider myself pretty Mac savy. That being said, Little Snitch threw me for a loop! It is WAY overly complicated and not intuitive.
I have dumped it in favor of a small, free app called Radio Silence. You might give it a try.

Little Snitch is a real pain when you first start using it. Browsers in particular need to reach many sites and you feel bombarded by pop-ups asking you to deny or permit links. Once past that phase, however, it is seldom heard from. I rarely block anything but what appear to be obvious ad sites or trackers, and any site with .ru in its name. And I do take a good look at requests for programs that I didn't think would want to connect to anyone on the Net except their own developers.