1513338 - Updates disabled by your system administrator displayed in the About window when it shouldn't be

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Enterprise Policies, enhancement)

Description

[gkarasik]

When I click on Help/About Firefox in Firefox Quantum, I get a screen that says, "Updates disabled by your system administrator." I would like to change this to allow these updates, but I can find no information on what to change. I have always allowed these updates, and I wish to allow them now. I did NOT reset this to disable updates. This happened a couple of updates back. I have already uninstalled/reinstalled Firefox, and I have changed settings in about:config. Nothing has helped.

Comment 1

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

What is the Firefox version displayed in Help -> About?

Comment 2

[gkarasik]

Firefox Quantum 64.0 32 bit_

Comment 3

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

Kirk, this appears to be outside of app update and in the Firefox ui and policy code. Could you take a look?

Comment 4

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

It sounds like Enterprise Policies have been enabled. There are a few ways that they can be enabled, but I'm not sure how they could have been enabled unintentionally. I have a few questions that will hopefully help us get to the bottom of this:

It looks like you indicated that you are using Windows 7, is that right?
Is your computer managed by an organization? Was it given to you for work or school?
Do you share the computer with any other users that might have wanted to disable Firefox update?

I would also like you to gather some information for me to help me understand what might be going on. Some of these steps assume that you are running Windows, so make sure to let me know if you are not so that I can give you different instructions.

1) Find out if any policies are applied:
  a) Go to the special URL: "about:policies"
  b) Are there entries under the "Policy Name" heading? If so, what entries exist and what values are they set to?
2) Check for a policy JSON file in the installation directory:
  a) Can you locate the installation directory (the folder containing firefox.exe)?
     Typically, this will be "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox".
  b) Does that directory contain a file called "policies" or "policies.json"?
  c) If so, what is in that file?
3) Check preferences:
  a) Go to the special URL: "about:config"
  b) Type "browser.policies" in the search bar at the top
  c) Are there any preferences that match? What are their names and values?
4) Check for registry entries:
  a) Open the start menu by clicking the toolbar button or tapping the Windows key.
  b) Type "Powershell" to find the Windows Powershell application.
  c) Open the application by clicking on it tapping the ENTER key.
  d) Enter these commands (without the quotes), and let me know what output you get:
    i)  "ls -r HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla"
    ii) "ls -r HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla"

Don't worry if some of these steps result in an empty page or an error message. That will still give us information about what is going on.

Comment 5

[gkarasik]

Ansers inline:

It looks like you indicated that you are using Windows 7, is that right?

	Win7/SP1/Ent/fully patched including yesterday

Is your computer managed by an organization?

No. It's in a workgroup, five Win7 PCs in all.

Was it given to you for work or school?

No. I set up it and the other, similar computers on my small network. (BTW, the other computers all show "updates disable by your system administrator".

Do you share the computer with any other users that might have wanted to disable Firefox update?

No.

1) Find out if any policies are applied:
  b) Are there entries under the "Policy Name" heading? If so, what entries exist and what values are they set to?

The sole Plicy Name is "DisableAppUpdate" and it's set to true.

2) Check for a policy JSON file in the installation directory:
  b) Does that directory contain a file called "policies" or "policies.json"?

It does not.

3) Check preferences:
  a) Go to the special URL: "about:config"
  b) Type "browser.policies" in the search bar at the top
  c) Are there any preferences that match? What are their names and values?

There is no "browser.policies" entry.

4) Check for registry entries:

    i)  "ls -r HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla"
    ii) "ls -r HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla"

Using PShell 6.11. Neither command returns a value.

Don't worry if some of these steps result in an empty page or an error message. That will still give us information about what is going on.

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Actually, policies.json would be in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\distribution

Can you check there?

Where did you get the copy of Firefox that you installed?

Comment 7

[gkarasik]

Yes, it's there. It contains this only:

{
  "policies": {    "DisableAppUpdate": true
  }
}
I downloaded Firefox from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Comment 8

[gkarasik]

In policies.json I changed true to false. As a result, the "Updates disabled..." message has now gone away, so I can now update FIrefox as I'd like. If you'd like I will continue to trouble-shoot with you, but as far as I am concerned, this problem is solved.

Comment 9

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

You can remove the file completely.

It appears some software was installed that added this file to disable updates.

Was something installed on all of the computers besides Firefox?

If you remove this file, updates will become enabled.

Is there any antivirus or other software installed on these machines?

Can you look in the add/remove programs on Windows and see if any software was recently installed/updated since Firefox was installed?

Comment 10

[gkarasik]

Nothing recently added. Interestingly, the creation date on policies.json was yesterday, although this problem has existed for a while.

Is it preferable to delete policies.json as opposed to leaving it there with a value set to false?

Comment 11

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

> Is it preferable to delete policies.json as opposed to leaving it there with a value set to false?

I would rather you delete it to see if it gets recreated by some application that we can figure out.

Comment 12

[gkarasik]

Done. I will keep an eye on that directory for a couple of weeks and post then. Thanks for the timely help.

Comment 13

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

gkarasik, I'm closing this bug because there is nothing here to do on our end, but please please do report back if you see that file created again by some external program. Thanks for filing the bug!