1215561 - Firefox Mac does not prompt for admin credentials to update

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 394984

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[Matt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Build ID: 20150929144111

Steps to reproduce:

Unlike basically every other Mac application, Firefox requires you to log into OS X as an admin user to use its self-update mechanism.

1) Wait for a Firefox update to be available.
2) Log into your Mac as a non-admin user (which is a best practice for security even though it's not OS X's default).
3) Launch Firefox and wait for the automatic update check to happen.


Actual results:

You see a message telling you that an update is available, but you have to log in as another user to install it.


Expected results:

As is standard Mac practice, Firefox should prompt that an upgrade is available. If the user chooses to install it, Firefox should prompt for administrative credentials.

Comment 1

[Paul Pasca[Away. Please needinfo? Paul Oiegas [:pauloiegasSV]]]

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Build ID: 20150917150946

I believe this may be conditioned by a Mac OS setting for profiles. I've tested on OS X 10.11 and I encountered a flash update notification. I had to introduce my user password, not admin. Firefox didn't ask for an update, but I assume it is going to have the same behavior. 
Isn't this an admin privileges setting ? Can you please check that and please provide the results? Thanks.

Comment 2

[Matt]

Attachment: Screenshot: About Firefox without update option.png

This is not about plug-in updates. This is about updates to Firefox itself. I do not have a screenshot of the main dialog that appears explaining why you have to go manually download an update. You cannot make it appear on demand. But the attached screenshot shows the About Firefox window. Version 42.0 was just released, so an update is available. But instead of the usual "Update" button, you get a message to go online.

The fundamental issue is that Firefox for Mac requires that your user owns /Applications/Firefox.app (or has administrator privileges) to install updates. Basically every other app will detect if you don't have sufficient privileges, then prompt you for admin credentials, in order to update.

Comment 3

[Paul Pasca[Away. Please needinfo? Paul Oiegas [:pauloiegasSV]]]

If the administrator provides privileges to a user to update and install new applications, that one user doesn't need to enter the admin password, it needs to enter it's profile password. If the admin doesn't provide privileges for users, then those users have to enter the admin password in order to update or install a new program. It seems that this is more like a Mac OS setting, rather than a Firefox one.

Comment 4

[Matt]

Paul, do you use a Mac? It doesn't sound like you understand the normal user experience in these circumstances. I'm not being dramatic when I say that 99% of Mac applications follow the same basic process for this. If a user does not have privileges to modify an application, the application's update process uses standard OS APIs to elevate privileges. This process causes the OS to prompt the user to authenticate as an account that does have the necessary privileges (is a member of the OS built-in "admin" group).

This is yet another example of Firefox providing a non-standard experience in a way that is inconvenient for users.

If the standard Mac flow I described isn't familiar to you, I suggest consulting with a developer who is a regular Mac user.

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This is a valid longstanding bug and in fact a copy of an old report that we are very close to fixing.