1254494 - Firefox auto downloading and installing updates

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect, P3)

Description

[Ayan]

Attachment: FF settings

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/37.0
Build ID: 20150415140819

Steps to reproduce:

I have FF set up to never auto update (screenshot attached)


Actual results:

FF keeps downloading fresh updates


Expected results:

Keep the FF version to the installed version (software compatibility with a plugin I use for work)

Comment 1

[Ayan]

Attachment: Screenshot - Update Settings

Comment 2

[Ayan]

Attachment: FF update - screenshot

Comment 3

[maik.diessner]

Firefox 91.0.1 actually will reset the option "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them" to "Automatically install updates" after installing it (after having uninstalled previous version) so the user has to adjust this option back to after each manual update "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them".

Comment 4

[Robin Steuber (they/them) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to maik.diessner from comment #3)

Firefox 91.0.1 actually will reset the option "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them" to "Automatically install updates" after installing it (after having uninstalled previous version)

Yes. Uninstalling clears your install-wide update preferences. This is intentional. Uninstalling/reinstalling and creating a new profile should always bring you back to a clean state. Since the "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them" setting is not a per-profile setting (on Windows), it gets reset on uninstall rather than on profile reset.

If you want to use the installer to install a new version without clearing your update settings, you can install without uninstalling. Alternately, it is also possible to use Enterprise Policies. If these are configured through Windows Group Policy, they will persist even if Firefox is uninstalled.

By the way, this is completely different from the problem being reported in this bug. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and close this bug because the setting in question no longer exists. In the future, if you cannot find an existing bug that matches yours, please file a new bug. Thanks!

Comment 5

[maik.diessner]

Thunderbird doesn't behave this way. The setting is preserved properly there because the old profile still is used. I've just uninstalled the program, not the profiles.

Firefox also uses the old profile properly but resets the update setting. Makes no sense to me.

Comment 6

[Robin Steuber (they/them) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to maik.diessner from comment #5)

Thunderbird doesn't behave this way. The setting is preserved properly there because the old profile still is used. I've just uninstalled the program, not the profiles.

Correct. Thunderbird does not currently use per-install update settings. So its setting would be stored in the profile.

Firefox also uses the old profile properly but resets the update setting. Makes no sense to me.

Yes, as I explained, this setting no longer resides in the profile. On Windows, it was moved to a per-installation location in Bug 1458308 so that it could be properly respected by the Background Update Agent (Bug 1343669). We may eventually bring this change to other platforms, and possibly even to Thunderbird.

This is exposed to users through the message in the Update Settings that reads:

This setting will apply to all Windows accounts and Firefox profiles using this installation of Firefox.