1026952 - Firefox Update for OS X doesn't work for non-administrator user

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 394984

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[Marco Brandizi]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140506152807

Steps to reproduce:

This has been happening for a long time. FF tells me there are updates (or I check manually), then I tell it I do want to update, it hangs forever trying to download from the server. The procedure works if I run FF as administrator, but that's no good, I'd like it to work as man other OS X applications. Firefox.app belongs to root/root Unix user/group and it has rwxr-xr-x permissions (all the file tree). I don't wish to make this writeable by regular users.


Actual results:

As non-admin user, the downloading window hangs up forever.


Expected results:

As it is common in OS X, the update request should trigger the authentication window, so that the regular user has a chance to authenticate ad admin and the installation can go ahead, ran by the admin. It should also set proper Unix permissions to installed files (regular-user membership or granting it write access is not acceptable).

Exactly the same considerations apply to Thunderbird too and likely other Mozilla products.

Comment 1

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl]]

I think bug 394984 covers what you're requesting here. Marco, could you confirm before I mark this as duplicate? Thanks!

Comment 2

[Marco Brandizi]

Stephen, up to you to decide. That bug seems wider than this, cause it is about the first installation too i.e., copying the Firefox.app directory from a .dmg file to a folder of your choice. That is problematic as well in OS X, since they haven't thought that a regular user would like to set different ownership, after click 'n drag. I'm not quite sure how this can be dealt with. Personally I use an Automator+Bash script that can be invoked from Finder, via right-click, and that chmods/chowns the proper access rights. Maybe a post-copy script can be attached to the .dmg, or maybe the Apple's App Store could ease things.

In any case, the upgrade is only a part of the general topic: seamless installation and upgrade.

Comment 3

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl]]

In bug 394984, we're trying to leave the permissions the way they are but we add the ability for other users (who can elevate) to update as well. I feel comfortable duplicating this bug with bug 394984 at this time. Thanks, Marco!

Comment 4

[Sierk Bornemann]

(In reply to Marco Brandizi from comment #2)
> Personally I use an Automator+Bash script that can be invoked
> from Finder, via right-click, and that chmods/chowns the proper access
> rights.

+1

So do I. I ($USER = non-root, non-admin, UID=502, GUID=staff) use this following bash one-liner after each drag & drop out of the user-opened and -mounted DMG file:

AppName="Firefox.app"; sudo chown -R root:admin "/Applications/${AppName}"; sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/${AppName}"

while

drwxrwxr-x+ 67 root  admin     2346 20 Jun 11:35 Applications
and in /Applications (for security reasons):
drwxr-xr-x@  3 root   admin    136 20 Jun 01:38 Firefox.app
or
drwxr-xr-x@  3 root   wheel    136 20 Jun 01:38 Firefox.app

If Firefox were an App Store application it definitely would be:
drwxr-xr-x@  3 root   wheel    136 20 Jun 01:38 Firefox.app

> Maybe a post-copy script can be attached to the .dmg, or maybe the
> Apple's App Store could ease things.

+1