1048398 - Firefox 31 Update changed ownership of some profile files (prefs.js) to Administrator

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[Rob T.]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140716183446

Steps to reproduce:

Updated Firefox from 30 to 31 via help->about firefox, install update, 
Restarted Firefox.




Actual results:

After the Firefox 31 update on Windows 7 Pro/64, some of my profile files, including prefs.js wound up being owned by Administrator instead of my user id.

./bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-2014-08-01_2123_qUOta3ff7EZwuZzWpP3Z0g==.json
./bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-2014-08-03_2123_jhuDVNX3Y2DJn78D7jufsw==.json
./healthreport/state.json
./prefs.js
./saved-telemetry-pings/94fbdb61-0adc-4725-9356-88171fc0593a
./sessionstore.js
./Telemetry.ShutdownTime.txt
./webapps/webapps.json


Firefox gave no visible indication that it had any permission problems, instead a number of things didn't work (session save & restore, changing any options/preferences.).   Saving the session or options failed silently.


Expected results:

Firefox update should not have changed the ownership of profile files.
Firefox should have reported permission/access problems when trying to read/write prefs.js and session state.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Are you able to reproduce the situation by reinstalling FF30 over FF31, checking the file permissions and updating manually FF30 to 31?

FF30 is available here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/30.0/win32/

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

No response to comment #1... resolving -> incomplete

Comment 3

[Rob T.]

Providing additional info, the problem of some of my profile files winding up owned by Administrator reappeared during the Firefox 41.0.2 update.  

Note: I have 3 different Firefox profiles under my User ID on this Windows 7 machine.  So far the problem has only occurred to my main profile, the one that is the default for launching URLs on Windows.

prefs.js was owned by Administrator, the result was that I couldn't connect to any https site -- secure connection failed sec_library_error_failure.

The following files were owned by Administrator instead of my User ID.

./prefs.js
./datareporting/archived/2015-10/1445362719167.da18a5c7-1485-4fb2-a481-090218c433ff.main.jsonlz4
./datareporting/archived/2015-10/1445362719198.1521cb81-f676-4d03-9520-3fd5ac6c7e5b.saved-session.jsonlz4
./datareporting/session-state.json
./revocations.txt
./saved-telemetry-pings/1521cb81-f676-4d03-9520-3fd5ac6c7e5b
./saved-telemetry-pings/da18a5c7-1485-4fb2-a481-090218c433ff
./Telemetry.ShutdownTime.txt
./webapps/webapps.json


Also, a number of empty prefs-NN.js files were created in the process that look like failed attempts to save/backup/modify the prefs.js file, probably due to the inability to open prefs.js because it was owned by admin.

-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:08 prefs-59.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:08 prefs-60.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:08 prefs-61.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:08 prefs-62.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:08 prefs-63.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:08 prefs-64.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:09 prefs-65.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:09 prefs-66.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:09 prefs-67.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:12 prefs-68.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:12 prefs-69.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:13 prefs-70.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:14 prefs-71.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-72.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-73.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-74.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-75.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-76.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-77.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:20 prefs-78.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:21 prefs-79.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:21 prefs-80.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:21 prefs-81.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:21 prefs-82.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:22 prefs-83.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:22 prefs-84.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:22 prefs-85.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-86.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-87.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-88.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-89.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-90.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-91.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-92.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-93.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:23 prefs-94.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:24 prefs-95.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-96.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-97.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-98.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-99.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-100.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-101.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-102.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-103.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:26 prefs-104.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:27 prefs-105.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:27 prefs-106.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:34 prefs-107.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:40 prefs-108.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:40 prefs-109.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:40 prefs-110.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:40 prefs-111.js
-r-x------ 1 rct None     0 Oct 20 16:40 prefs-112.js

Comment 4

[Rob T.]

In case any of that looks strange for a Windows box, I used Cygwin tools on Windows 7 to be able to capture textual info about files that could be copy and pasted.