1650985 - Allow users to completely disable automatic updates

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Toolkit :: Application Update, enhancement)

Description

[Tinder Bard]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

Up front, I do not want Firefox automatically updating itself and FORCING a restart at inconvenient times, such as when I'm surfing the web. I want to determine when I will do the update and go through the associated hassle of migrating my settings. (I'm on Fedora, and for some reason Firefox ALWAYS creates a new profile with every single update. No, I will NOT store my profile on an outside server. I don't have a Mozilla account, I do not want a Mozilla account, and I will not get a Mozilla account!)

To get around Fedora updating Firefox on me, I uninstalled Fedora's RPM and installed the latest ESR from mozilla.org. I turned off every update parameter I could find in about:config and set up empty URLs for the update servers. I added aus[0-9].mozilla.org to my hosts file and pi-hole blacklists.

Firefox was still nagging me about updates, even on the extended service release.

I compiled a bespoke version of Firefox 73 for Linux with various items like automatic updates disabled and update servers set to null URLs. Firefox IS STILL forcing restarts because it believes it has been updated.

Actual results:

About once a week my specially compiled version informs me an update has been installed and a restart is required. The restart closes all windows, including about a dozen private browsing windows I usually have open to keep cookie tracking down to a dull roar. Unless I spend time to copy the URLs, paste them to an editor, and upon restart re-enter provate browsing mode and re-copy/re-paste those URLs I can't return to the pages.

Expected results:

Firefox should not have requested a restart because it believes it has updated itself. It appears the code that checks to see if an update has been downloaded and installed is broken and is kicking in when it shouldn't.

If the developers at Firefox decided to take this request seriously, I can supply full details of the build.

Commentary: No other software I run is as pushy and hostile about updates as Firefox. GPodder poliely reminds me every time I restart my system, which isn't very often. KMail is completely silent; it gets updated when I do Fedora updates, but at least it doesn't lose all my settings and get rid of all my saved messages. I haven't used Thunderbird in a while, but it wasn't nearly as gung-ho about updates as Firefox is. Ditto for Kontact, Okular, Speedcrunch, Falkon, Nextcloud ... Only Firefox, which as I've mentioned before loses my profile with every update!

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Tinder Bard from comment #0)

About once a week my specially compiled version informs me an update has been installed and a restart is required.

What does this look like? Can you give us a screenshot of the prompt you're seeing?

Comment 3

[Tinder Bard]

Attachment: Screenshot_20200707_133746_Nightly_Restart.jpg

I was going to write a comment about having to wait a week for this to happen, but as I was looking up this bug to add said comment it happened again. :) Screen shot is attached.

There seems to be something wrong with my compile of Nightly: the Browse a File link didn't work. I had to use Chromium to add the attachment!

Comment 4

[Tinder Bard]

P.S. Yes, a definite problem with my compiled version. I installed the Fedora RPM. Sure enough, Firefox created a new profile but at least the Browse a File link worked.

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Ok that message is what appears when Firefox attempts to launch a content process and it looks like the content process is from a different build. I did find this morning that there might be cases where we show that and the content process has simply crashed early in startup so that might be what is going on here. The message by itself doesn't mean that Firefox has updated.

If you load about:support and look at the build ID, is that actually changing after you restart from seeing this message?

Comment 6

[Tinder Bard]

I'll take a look at that if/when it occurs again. I currently have four(!) different Firefox builds on my system stored in separate folders. One build is on the path in /opt/firefox/firefox, but /opt/firefox is a symink to /opt/firefox-X.Y.Z. It's possible I'm updating the target of the symlink without first shutting down the running instance of Firefox that's using it.

Comment 7

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Tinder Bard from comment #6)

I'll take a look at that if/when it occurs again. I currently have four(!) different Firefox builds on my system stored in separate folders. One build is on the path in /opt/firefox/firefox, but /opt/firefox is a symink to /opt/firefox-X.Y.Z. It's possible I'm updating the target of the symlink without first shutting down the running instance of Firefox that's using it.

That would definitely cause it. I forget the details but I think that would also cause you seeing the issue of new profiles getting created all the time.

Comment 8

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

I'm going through old bugs, and I see that this one hasn't been touched in a while. Are you still experiencing this problem?

Comment 9

[AmirH [:Amir]]

Marking this as incomplete. More data is needed. We can reopen it if it's ongoing.