1478872 - app.update.silent isn’t working

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect, P3)

Description

[Chris Morgan]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0
Build ID: 20180725220116

Steps to reproduce:

Bug 1420514 killed app.update.enabled, which I had been using to only update Nightly every few days, manually, when convenient.

I also have app.update.silent set to true. It’s supposed to suppress the doorhanger about there being updates.


Actual results:

Doorhangers pop up about updates.


Expected results:

No doorhangers, because of app.update.silent.

I work around this by adding a few zeroes to app.update.interval and app.update.promptWaitTime.

Comment 1

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

For your use case, I'd recommend using the method that's replaced app.update.enabled, which is to set the DisableAppUpdate enterprise policy (see https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/README.md and ignore the note about it being ESR only, that's no longer the case on Nightly).

But as for the problem with app.update.silent, I can't reproduce it myself and I can't see what could cause it either; the code that uses that pref is as straightforward as you would hope, and I can't find anywhere that we skip checking the pref before showing a prompt. My only guess is that the pref itself isn't really getting set; perhaps some add-on or other software is messing with it. So I guess I have to ask you to check in about:config that app.update.silent correctly shows up as true.

Comment 2

[Chris Morgan]

app.update.silent is true. app.update.auto is also false, which could perhaps be significant? I set both of these in about:config years ago and they’re still there like that.

The app.update.interval and app.update.promptWaitTime increases don’t seem to have done what I expect, either; I still get a prompt within half a day of restarting after an update.

The policy approach seems feasible now, which it wasn’t obviously when it first came out (documentation was scarce on the ground); thanks for the suggestion.

Comment 3

[Chris Morgan]

Actually, DisableAppUpdate isn’t suitable at all: it actually *disables* updates, whereas app.update.enabled = false merely meant that it wouldn’t go looking for updates *automatically*, but you could still trigger them yourself.

Comment 4

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

I'm confirming this bug because it really looks to me like in bug 893505 when the doorhanger prompts were added we just never had them support app.update.silent, and nobody noticed up to now; that patch added lines like [1] where we send the update-available notification before we even invoke the prompter (which is where the silent check has always been). We should make a decision to either add that support or remove the pref if we're not going to support it.

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/196560b95f191b48ff7cba7c2ba9237bba6b5b6a/toolkit/mozapps/update/nsUpdateService.js#2272

Comment 5

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

The old UI that the app.update.silent pref was created for has been removed and product drivers decided not to allow the ability to disable update except through the policy. I wouldn't be against there being a policy that disables the automatic checking but that would need to be approved by product drivers and a new bug requesting the feature.

Marking this bug as wontfix since the pref and the UI it was for have been removed.

Comment 6

[Chris Morgan]

This feature really doesn’t feel like it should be a policy. My impression is that policies are enterprisey features, and I can’t think of any compelling reason why a larger deployer would want to allow updates, but only when the user chose to invoke them.

This really just feels like a case of accidental breakage of a non-default feature, and I think it would be better fixed still in preferences.

Anyway, I’ve filed bug 1557660 as a feature request for a policy for this.

Comment 7

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

There have been issues with user's not updating because it has been disabled via a pref so product drivers chose to remove it. It is one of those cases where it is great for those using it properly and terrible for those that aren't with those that aren't using insecure versions of Firefox so that won out.