1498741 - DisableAppUpdate policy does not disable app updates

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Enterprise Policies, defect)

Description

[Ambrose Li]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create policy file with contents “{"policies": { "DisableAppUpdate": true }}”

3. Leave browser running for a few days


Actual results:

2. Edit|Preferences shows “Your organization has disabled the ability to change some preferences.” and “Updates disabled by your system administrator.”

4. At some point, opening a new tab produces the error message “We have just installed an update in the background. Click Restart Nightly to finish applying it.” and Firefox refuses to open any page.


Expected results:

“Disable app update” should mean disable app updates. App updates are clearly still being installed despite Firefox’s claiming to have updates disabled.

(Note: Bug filed against the 2018-10-09 build.)

Comment 1

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Hmm is this a recent a regression?

Comment 2

[Ambrose Li]

I don’t know if I would call it a regression, since I didn’t know policies existed until recently, and I could not get my update script to generate the policy file correctly at the beginning.

Also, it’s not the main app that’s being updated (when I checked it still said 2018-10-09, so the main app was the same, according to the about box) but *something* was updated though it’s not clear what, since there’s no detailed info anywhere obvious that I could find.

Comment 3

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

Hmm. Well, we don't really have multiple kinds of updates, the main application update is the only one that uses that prompt (there's automatic updates to addons, but those are silent).

A have a few more questions, if you don't mind:
Was the browser running when you created the policy file, or did you start it afterwards?
When you click the Update History button in Preferences, is there anything in that list that's newer than the time you added the policy file?

Thanks.

Comment 4

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

(In reply to Ambrose Li from comment #2)
> Also, it’s not the main app that’s being updated (when I checked it still
> said 2018-10-09, so the main app was the same, according to the about box)

Was this still the same after you restarted? or did the date change afterwards in the about box?

Comment 5

[Ambrose Li]

Yes, the date changes after restart.

Maybe I’m doing the update wrong. Give me a week while I tweak my script. If I can fix it I’ll mark this INVALID myself.

Comment 6

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Btw, when you have a chance, please go to about:policies and see if the DisableAppUpdate policy shows up in the Active section

Comment 7

[Ambrose Li]

about:policies reports, as expected, that the policy is active (on both machines).

I believe what happened was my update script replaced the binaries (not directly overwriting them, but unpacked in a separate location that’s later moved into place) and Firefox correctly detected that binaries were changed. So the logic is correct but the message is misleading. As promised, I’ll close this myself as INVALID and file a new bug about the message.

Comment 8

[Ambrose Li]

New bug filed as #1501543