Closed Bug 1755280 Opened 3 years ago Closed 3 years ago

Application updates performed while running Kaspersky can cause PDF association setting to be lost

Categories

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Application Update
Version:
Firefox 97
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: spsware, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:97.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/97.0

Steps to reproduce:

Accepted update request

Actual results:

In Settings, I have both application associations for PDF's are set to "Foxit reader" Every time an update is added, this setting is changed to "Save file."
I've also tried selecting "Use default application". It still gets set back to save file.
It's been doing this for years: I've finally got fed up to report it

Expected results:

Updates should not change personal settings. If it has to be done for operational reasons, a warning should be given.

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Toolkit::Application Update' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Component: Untriaged → Application Update
Product: Firefox → Toolkit

That sounds very unexpected. I don't think that "Save File" is even the default for PDFs, so it's mysterious that it would keep being reset to that. I'm a little busy right this moment, but I will see if I can reproduce this when I finish what I'm doing (hopefully tomorrow). In the meantime, I have some questions about the problem you are having:

Do you notice anything else being reset? Your history is preserved? Are bookmarks lost? Have you changed any other settings? Are those preserved, or lost when this happens?

(In reply to Steve from comment #0)

In Settings, I have both application associations for PDF's are set to "Foxit reader"

I took a look at my settings, and I only see one "Content Type" listed for PDF. Since you say you set "both", I am curious what the other one that you are seeing is. What does it say under "Content Type"?

Flags: needinfo?(rspmail)

In answer to questions above: -

  1. Nothing else appears to be reset (that I know/care about anyway)
  2. History is perserved (for that session - it's set to clear history on exit)
  3. No bookmarks are lost
  4. I have changed various settings in Privacy from the defaults. These are retained

There 2 settings for PDF under "Content Type" shown as: -

Portable Document Format (PDF) (application/pdf)
&
Portable Document Format (PDF) (document/pdf)

Is there any way to send a screenshot, if that would help?

Flags: needinfo?(rspmail)

Hmm, I'm not able to reproduce this on my machine. I used Sumatra PDF instead of Foxit Reader (since I already had it installed), but surely that shouldn't matter.

I wonder if it's related to the fact that you have two PDF entries and I only have one. It's not immediately clear to me how more can be added so that I can test that. I'll see if I can get someone that knows more about it to help out here.

@jaws - Maybe you can shed some light on what's going on here?

Flags: needinfo?(jaws)

Some more info. on content type. The problem PC has Kaspersky Internet Security installed. Running Firefox under KIS "Safe Money" mode, the Content Type actions are different from "normal" mode. Also there is only one PDF entry in this mode. In normal mode there are 17 entries in the Content type table and in "Safe" mode there are 10. I also have a litle used laptop (up to date re. Firefox & Windows version) which only has 8 entries (with only 1 PDF entry) in the table.
Should I try re-installing Firefox?

Could you try updating Firefox while Kaspersky is in "Safe Mode" and tell us if the problem still happens?

Flags: needinfo?(rspmail)

Hey Sam, I think you recently worked on PDF and file associations. Any idea what could be happening here?

Flags: needinfo?(jaws) → needinfo?(sfoster)

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #7)

Hey Sam, I think you recently worked on PDF and file associations. Any idea what could be happening here?

We made some changes to how PDFs are handled but I don't think at any point we've updated existing users' handler settings. That Kaspersky is apparently changing prefs seems to be a place to start looking. The document/pdf entry is strange - we don't handle that, only application/pdf. Perhaps we did in the past at some point? Or is Kaspersky simply replacing/writing to the handlers.json in the user profile.

Maybe Molly knows more?

Flags: needinfo?(sfoster) → needinfo?(mhowell)

Sam is correct, all our internal handling is around application/pdf. I've never heard of document/pdf and neither has Firefox; we wouldn't be doing anything special with it at all, and I don't see any indication that we ever have. We very recently made some changes that might have affected this, but I'm not aware of anything relevant that goes back years.

Comment 5 does seem to indicate that Kaspersky is messing with handers.json in some fashion, so I agree with looking there first. Reinstalling Firefox would be very unlikely to help I'm afraid, but you might want to try a profile refresh.

Flags: needinfo?(mhowell)

Regarding Comment 6 above, I did the recent update (97.0.1 to 97.0.2) with Firefox in Kaspersky Safe mode, using the button in the Help-About banner.
The PDF personal settings were NOT changed

Flags: needinfo?(rspmail)

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:Amir, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(ahabibi)

(In reply to Steve from comment #10)

Regarding Comment 6 above, I did the recent update (97.0.1 to 97.0.2) with Firefox in Kaspersky Safe mode, using the button in the Help-About banner.
The PDF personal settings were NOT changed

Well this sure makes it sound like Kaspersky is somehow causing this problem. I'm not entirely sure what to do about this. Potentially we could try to fix Firefox to work around whatever weird thing Kaspersky is doing, but I'm not convinced that that is the right thing to do. Especially because they might change what they are doing and then we would forever be playing a "Whack a mole" game trying to fix their bugs.

Maybe we ought to try to talk to Kaspersky before we take any action here?

@Amir - Do you know if there is someone we can reach out to about this?

Severity: -- → S3
Summary: Updates change my personal option settings → Application updates performed while running Kaspersky can cause PDF association setting to be lost

OK, things have got slightly weirder - an update prompt arrived today (98.0) so I did some checks.

  1. With Firefox running normally i.e. not in Kaspersky Safe Mode, somewhere along the line, don't know when, a third entry for PDFs in the applications table has appeared, so there are now: -

Portable Document Format (PDF)
(application/download)

Portable Document Format (PDF)
(application/pdf)

Portable Document Format (PDF)
(document/pdf)

  1. However, when I ran the update, none of the Actions were changed, so for the moment, the problem seems to have disappeared

@Kirk, We can get in touch with someone from Kaspersky to farther investigate this. Currently I don't have any one to reach out to.

@Steve, based on your last point, would you say this issue is resolved for you?

Flags: needinfo?(ahabibi) → needinfo?(rspmail)

It appears to be resolved. I notice that Ver. 98 seems to handle attachments slightly differently to previous; perhaps that has cleared the issue?

Flags: needinfo?(rspmail)

Further to above, I've noticed Ver. 98 doesn't handle downloads exactly as specied. If the application action specified is a "use application" type, the item to view is alwayssaved every time to the specified download location as well

It sounds like the issue is gone, so I'm going to go ahead and close this.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 3 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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