Bugzilla

Thanks again for all the info! Unfortunately, you're looking at a few different bugs at the same time.

Your first problem is that Firefox can't grab a mutex due to missing write permission in the Firefox update directory; see bug 1940481. As of a few months ago, Firefox tries to ensure that only one process updates at a time on Mac and Linux (previously that was Windows-only, but it turns out corrupted updates are bad even on *nix.) To do this, it creates a file in the installation directory, but assuming you don't run Firefox as root that isn't possible. Until fixed, that stops any attempt at updating on your system.

The second problem is that you have multiple instances open. Bug 1941788 tracks that Firefox won't do interactive updates if multiple instances are running, since overwriting Firefox while another instance is using it is a bad idea.

Unfortunately, I don't know when these will be fixed. My suggestion in the meantime would be subscribing to https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/announce/, which will tell you about new releases and betas.

Other than that, the best workaround I can think of is making /usr/local/firefox be read-write, and then only using a single profile at once, such that the entire Firefox autoupdater works as normal. I can guess that's probably a non-starter for you. Once bug 1940481 is fixed, there might be more options.

Sorry! (Marking as duplicate of bug 1940481 since that seems like the more relevant/larger issue; also duplicate of bug 1941788.)

Thanks again for all the info! Unfortunately, you're looking at a few different bugs at the same time.

Your first problem is that Firefox can't grab a mutex due to missing write permission in the Firefox update directory; see bug 1940481. As of a few months ago, Firefox tries to ensure that only one process updates at a time on Mac and Linux (previously that was Windows-only, but it turns out corrupted updates are bad even on *nix.) To do this, it creates a file in the installation directory, but assuming you don't run Firefox as root that isn't possible. Until [edit: that bug is] fixed, that stops any attempt at updating on your system.

The second problem is that you have multiple instances open. Bug 1941788 tracks that Firefox won't do interactive updates if multiple instances are running, since overwriting Firefox while another instance is using it is a bad idea.

Unfortunately, I don't know when these will be fixed. My suggestion in the meantime would be subscribing to https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/announce/, which will tell you about new releases and betas.

Other than that, the best workaround I can think of is making /usr/local/firefox be read-write, and then only using a single profile at once, such that the entire Firefox autoupdater works as normal. I can guess that's probably a non-starter for you. Once bug 1940481 is fixed, there might be more options.

Sorry! (Marking as duplicate of bug 1940481 since that seems like the more relevant/larger issue; also duplicate of bug 1941788.)