1298091 - Firefox doesn't always restart after applying update, due to a shutdown hang

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Chris AtLee [:catlee]]

Sometimes when I apply a new update for Nightly, Firefox doesn't restart afterwards. The browser seems to shut down cleanly and exit, but then the new version is not started. There are no firefox processes running afterwards. The update does seem to have been applied properly though.

Any tips to help debug this would be appreciated!

Comment 1

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

Do you see anything in the browser console that might indicate what is going on? The restart code is actually outside of app update and is used by many consumers including the Firefox about window to restart. If any code observing quit-application-requested returned true this would prevent the restart.
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/content/aboutDialog-appUpdater.js#222

Try restarting using Help -> Restart with Add-ons Disabled... to try to reproduce it using that code path.

Comment 2

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

Note: if it shuts down cleanly then it could be something to do with the updater not relaunching. Could you attach the following files after this happens

In <install directory>/updates/:
last-update.log
backup-update.log (if present)

In <install directory>/updates/0/:
update.log (if present)

Comment 3

[Chris AtLee [:catlee]]

I don't generally have the browser console open, so I haven't noticed anything in there.

Comment 4

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

Since the process exits the browser console won't likely provide anything useful. It would be good to verify that the process exits as well.

Comment 5

[Chris AtLee [:catlee]]

Today's update worked well, but I did notice I have zombie processes lying around that are a few days old.

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
catlee    2328  2325  1 Aug23 ?        01:02:04 /home/catlee/minefield/firefox
catlee   13177  2328  0 Aug23 ?        00:00:00 [firefox] <defunct>
catlee   25181  2328  0 Aug25 ?        00:00:00 [firefox] <defunct>
catlee   25370 25360  1 Aug25 ?        00:21:46 ./firefox --no-remote --profile /home/catlee/.mozilla/firefox/kr7ngjmo.Mozilla
catlee   30616  2328  0 11:18 ?        00:00:00 [firefox] <defunct>

Comment 6

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 7/30, contact :haik if urgent)]

There is a decent chance that the patch in bug 1250901 will avoid these zombie processes as well.

Comment 7

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

I just had this happen to me on Windows. The firefox.exe process didn't exit but the update succeeded anyways. This in all likelihood is a shutdown hang.

Comment 8

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

Moving to Startup and Profile system since there is code that handles shutdown there and this bug doesn't appear to be due to app update.

Comment 9

[Alexandre Vicenzi]

I just want to add that I get this quite often on Nightly because there are releases every day. I believe that once a week on maybe every fifteen days I get this issue.

It usually happens when I skip updates, for example, for two days I do not upgrade, then when I do it does not restart.
It's not something that I can reproduce when I want, most time it works just fine.

I'm currently on Ubuntu 18 and Nightly 70.

Comment 10

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

We typically see shutdown hangs when Firefox has been running longer.

Comment 11

[Alexandre Vicenzi]

(In reply to Robert Strong [:rstrong] (use needinfo to contact me) from comment #10)

We typically see shutdown hangs when Firefox has been running longer.

If that's the case, then it's explained why mine crashes a lot. Sometimes I suspend the laptop for over one week without any shutdown, and as I mentioned, I do not update every single day.