1448167 - Manually updating via command line Firefox 52.7.2esr partial.mar update.log reports failed, when actually succeeded

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect, P5)

Description

[Ben]

Attachment: fail-update.log

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20180315163333

Steps to reproduce:

Linux mint 18.1 (updates applied, except for original kernel)
Updating Firefox 52.6.0esr with firefox-52.6.0esr-52.7.2esr.partial.mar reports failed / unsuccessful update in the update.log file that's located in the directory where "updater" file & the update.mar file are located.

This path ~/Documents/backups/firefox/firefoxupdater is the path used in  to run the update command.
The install destination is /opt/firefox.  Fx 52.6.0esr was installed there. 

Two attachments - one "Failed update.log" & "Success update.log


Actual results:

The update.log & update.status both report installation "failed: 6
calling QuitProgressUI" - on several attempts.  (Assume "failed 6" is an err code).  But the installation actually succeeded.  

Those logs (reporting failure) are located in same folder as "updater" file & update.mar files were run from - in my home dir.

The original downloaded partial.mar update full file name must be renamed to "update.mar" before running the update (per Mozilla - Linux manual install instructions).


Expected results:

By accident, I noticed a newly modified update.log & update.status file were also created in the /opt/firefox directory.  
THEY reported the update SUCCEEDED (which it did). 
 I didn't realize the manual update process created 2 sets of update logs, *in two places*, saying  *different* things.

The first line the FAILED update.log complained was:
EXECUTE PATCH plugin-container
unable to open destination file: plugin-container, err: 2
### execution failed
FINISH PATCH updater
FINISH ADD update-settings.ini
backup_restore: backup file doesn't exist: update-settings.ini.moz-backup

After that, the remaining entries were like the last line - above.

I looked at /opt/firefox/plugin-container for oddities.  It has same permissions as firefox, firefox-bin, etc.. and shows a modified time today, on the last install. 
Don't know if it actually modified plugin-container's data, but the update continued.  
Other files show modified times a few seconds after plugin-container.

Side note:  Please post links to downloads of the Fx / Tb partial.mar updates on conspicuous pages.  I only found them from several web searches.  

When I looked y'day @ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/, it had no "updates" - only releases.   Today, I see the update files are back.
That page-info has "Modified March 22, 2018, 4:42:12 PM.  Someone figured out the updates links were missing.

I looked at several Mozilla main download pages - none had links to update files (partial.mar) &  few or none mention esr files.
When update files were missing on the ftp site, I only found http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/  with updates & signature files, by web searches - leading to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:Manually_Installing_a_MAR_file.

now - in "archives"???   What's that about?  They're current files.

Comment 1

[Ben]

Attachment: opt_firefox_success-last-update.log

Comment 2

[Ben]

Attachment: success-opt_firefox_updates.xml

Comment 3

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

As this report doesn't look particularly good, I'm moving it to component, while noting that I haven't tried yet to reproduce it. (leaving a NI not to forget about, although I'm not sure if I can catch the same update path on my Ubuntu)

Meanwhile, Robert, what do you make from comment 0?

Comment 4

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

For starters, this is happening when manually running the commands vs. updating within Firefox.

Comment 5

[Ben]

I hope the main point isn't being missed.  I'm not sure what, "this report doesn't look particularly good," means.
The issue appears very simple.  The manual update process did work, quite well. It took ~ 5 seconds to run and finish (no message in terminal, after it ran). 

It just wrote a false "install failed" report to one set of logs, and "success" to a 2nd set of logs.
Note: The update from 52.5.3esr to 52.6.0esr (using same manual command) did NOT create *any* update logs in the destination (root owned) directory.  
Creating update status files in the *destination* directory appears to be "new" in the 52.7.2esr update.  Maybe that's connected to conflicting update reports. 

Even if writing to 2 different update logs is intentional, there's no way it should write opposite results.

It could be related to being an ESR update, but I manually updated firefox-52.5.3esr to 52.6.0esr, using the same method, with no false "failed" status.

As every manual update before, I copied the "updater" file from the working version (52.6.0esr) being updated; copied it to a ~/ home directory, where the update.mar file was - so it uses the most recent updater file possible.
 
The update command had to be run as sudo, as every one before this.
The update worked fine & fast. Past manual updates never reported failure and success, but until now never created a 2nd update status file in the destination directory.  :)

Comment 6

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

It has to do with manual update support being best effort and the recommended method is to manually install the new version which is a simpler process.

Comment 7

[Ben]

"the recommended method is to manually install the new version"
There are no PGP detached signature files with the full versions.  To a lot of users, that would not be the best method.  Is there any reason there couldn't be .asc files listed with the full versions?

However, a lot of users don't want to download 50 - 60 MB for every package they use (Mozilla or not) - that can't update automatically, when updates may be 1 - 10 MB, .  In automatic updates, Mozilla uses small update files.

Could you put Mozilla's Linux packages on a Mozilla repo or PPA, so users can update automatically?

Comment 8

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

iirc there is a file with a single file with a list of the sigs but that's part of release engineering so to get that a release engineering bug would need to be opened. The same goes for Linux packages.

Comment 9

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

I downloaded 56.0 esr and the firefox-52.6.0esr-52.7.2esr.partial.mar for Linux x64. I failed to reproduce using the steps from
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:Manually_Installing_a_MAR_file

Only the update.log file and update.status files were created in the <path to outside directory> directory.

If you can reproduce please comment and I'll reopen this bug.