828009 - 17esr pave-over install displays "Firefox is out of date" page

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Nick McSpadden]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.101 Safari/537.11

Steps to reproduce:

Launched Firefox 17.0.2 ESR for the first time after installation.


Actual results:

It immediately opened http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/update/ and advised me to update to Firefox 18 Release.  Checking for updates as normal shows that it's on the ESR update channel, however.


Expected results:

Nothing - it should have displayed the start page.  There should be no prompt to update to a release channel install from the ESR.

Comment 1

[Patrick Gallagher]

I can confirm this happens on the Mac and Windows versions.

Comment 2

[u279076]

I'm unable to reproduce this.

1. Install Firefox 17.0.1esr and start with a new profile
2. Check for updates via Help > About Firefox
3. Restart Firefox once the update is downloaded
> Firefox starts showing one tab with the default start page
4. Check for updates again via Help > About Firefox
> No new updates are found

Comment 3

[u279076]

When I start Firefox 17.0.2esr for the first time I get two tabs:

0: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/17.0.2/firstrun/
1: Mozilla Firefox Start Page

Comment 4

[Patrick Gallagher]

(In reply to Anthony Hughes, Mozilla QA (:ashughes) from comment #2)
> I'm unable to reproduce this.
> 
> 1. Install Firefox 17.0.1esr and start with a new profile
> 2. Check for updates via Help > About Firefox
> 3. Restart Firefox once the update is downloaded
> > Firefox starts showing one tab with the default start page
> 4. Check for updates again via Help > About Firefox
> > No new updates are found

In my case I went from 10.0.11 esr to 17.0.2. 
First launch of 17.0.2 displayed the page http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/update/
The About Firefox box has the correct behavior. Says it's up-to-date. 
But the initial page should not be http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/update/

Comment 5

[u279076]

How did you update from 10.0.11esr?

Comment 6

[Patrick Gallagher]

(In reply to Anthony Hughes, Mozilla QA (:ashughes) from comment #5)
> How did you update from 10.0.11esr?

Didn't auto-update. That's the version I had installed prior to downloading 17.0.2.

Comment 7

[Matt Wobensmith [:mwobensmith][:matt:]]

For anyone else who experiences this, it's helpful to know if this the first time you've ever had Firefox of any version on this machine, or if you're upgrading, and if so, from what version.

I am trying to reproduce by deleting the Firefox user folder and launching the browser. I was able to see the incorrect update page one time out of ten tries. I will keep trying.

Comment 8

[Nick McSpadden]

(In reply to Anthony Hughes, Mozilla QA (:ashughes) from comment #2)
> I'm unable to reproduce this.
> 
> 1. Install Firefox 17.0.1esr and start with a new profile
> 2. Check for updates via Help > About Firefox
> 3. Restart Firefox once the update is downloaded
> > Firefox starts showing one tab with the default start page
> 4. Check for updates again via Help > About Firefox
> > No new updates are found

I was able to reproduce this with a profile leftover from 17.0.0 ESR, on a new account.  Steps:
1.  Install Firefox 17.0.0 ESR and start with a new profile.
2.  It recognizes an update is available on the ESR channel, as expected.
3.  Install Firefox 17.0.2 ESR (skipping 17.0.1) from dmg (not from autoupdate), start up with same profile.
4.  It goes to the update page on first launch.

Starting 17.0.2 ESR with a new profile does not go to the update page.

Comment 9

[u279076]

Okay, I can reproduce this now. It happens on pave-over install.

Comment 10

[Matt Wobensmith [:mwobensmith][:matt:]]

I can repro with Nick's steps also.

Comment 11

[u279076]

This is not a regression in Firefox 17.0.2esr, I was able to reproduce with a 17.0esr pave-over as well:
* 10.0.*esr -> 10.0.*esr does not exhibit this bug
* 10.0.*esr -> 17.0.*esr does exhibit this bug
* 17.0.*esr -> 17.0.*esr does exhibit this bug

Basic steps to reproduce:
1. Install a previous Firefox ESR
2. Start with a new profile and download a 17esr build
3. Quit Firefox and pave-over install 17esr
4. Start 17esr with the same profile
> First tab will be the "Firefox is out of date" page
> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/update/

Comment 12

[u279076]

In case it wasn't clear earlier, I can reproduce this by doing a pave-over install with 17.0esr, so this is not a regression we introduced in 17.0.2esr

Comment 13

[u279076]

Also of note, doing a pave-over using the latest 10.0.12esr build does not exhibit this bug. So this only affects 17esr for some reason.

Comment 14

[Patrick Gallagher]

Is this something that can be fixed at the update server end? Or will it need a new build to fix this?

Comment 15

[u279076]

We're trying to figure out why it's broken and what can be done to fix it. We'll update this bug report when we have further information.

Comment 16

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Here's what I posted to the enterprise newsgroup, for those following this bug:

'Thanks for the bug report - this is now on our radar. As of right now, we're going to pursue a fix to suppress the tab for our next Firefox ESR 17 release. This is one reason we ask for your support in testing your deployment scenarios before each release (see "Pre-release builds of FF10.0.12esr and FF17.0.2esr available for smoke testing" from 12/31).'

We are simultaneously pursuing bug 828064 to remedy the situation server side. No ETA at this time. If this blocks/delays a deployment of the ESR, please consider updating your users to Firefox ESR 10.0.12 until resolved for the latest security fixes.

Comment 17

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

nthomas points out that we should probably just port bug 737535 to ESR17, short term.

Long-term, we need to make sure that when making changes to the update config to eliminate whatsnew pages on update, we need to also update the in-product configuration for whatnsew accordingly (or even avoid making update-only changes, and always just use the in-product configuration).

Comment 18

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Attachment: disable whatsnew on esr17

[Approval Request Comment]
If this is not a sec:{high,crit} bug, please state case for ESR consideration:
User impact if declined: whatsnew page appears when updating not through our updater
Fix Landed on Version: N/A
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): no risk
String or UUID changes made by this patch: none

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/ESR_Landing_Process for more info.

Comment 19

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr17/rev/d0b86bcd7fd9

Comment 20

[Ioana (away)]

Verified as fixed on Firefox 17.0.3 ESR (20130215125822) on Mac OSX 10.8.2, Windows 7 64bit and Ubuntu 12.04.

Comment 21

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

mass remove verifyme requests greater than 4 months old