1772219 - Firefox Snap on Ubuntu 22.04 showing about:restartrequired

Status: NEW

(Core :: IPC, defect)

Description

[:gerard-majax]

It was my understanding that moving to Snap package would alleviate this problem. Given I have a Ubuntu 22.04 VM with a Firefox Snap installed, and there was an update of the snap package this morning, and I just got hit with about:restartrequired, I'm wondering:

• was the expectation of not having this problem anymore unfounded?
• is it in fact a bug?

Comment 1

[Jed Davis [:jld] ⟨⏰|UTC-7⟩ ⟦he/him⟧]

(In reply to Alexandre LISSY :gerard-majax from comment #0)

It was my understanding that moving to Snap package would alleviate this problem. Given I have a Ubuntu 22.04 VM with a Firefox Snap installed, and there was an update of the snap package this morning, and I just got hit with about:restartrequired, I'm wondering:

• was the expectation of not having this problem anymore unfounded?

Possibly. I'd assumed that, because each version is installed in a separate /snap/<package>/<version> directory and is immutable, that would mean that updates wouldn't affect running instances. But I've been seeing some things about the “refresh” action — e.g., bug 1737810 comment #37 — which suggest that that may not be the case.

Comment 2

[Olivier Tilloy]

That is unexpected, indeed. I find it suspicious that about:restartrequired should be shown when the snap is updated: the snap update mechanism is external, and firefox should be completely unaware of it.

Alexandre, can you reliably reproduce the problem if you manually update the snap while it is running?

Note that bug #1737810 mentioned earlier should now be fixed.

Comment 3

[:gerard-majax]

I'd need help to be able to downgrade and update again.

Comment 4

[Olivier Tilloy]

If you download a copy of the snap from the store, you can manually install it while the app is running, and this should have the same effect as applying an update, even if the exact same version is being installed:

snap download firefox
snap install firefox_*.snap

Otherwise, switching back and forth between channels would achieve the same result:

snap refresh firefox --beta
snap refresh firefox --stable

Comment 5

[:gerard-majax]

Ok, but reinstalling the same version will not trigger an about:restartrequired, so I'd need the switch beta / stable. I'll let you know when I have tested more.

Comment 6

[:gerard-majax]

So:

• currently, one cannot repro manually a refresh while firefox is running, since snapd 2.55.5 blocks that
• --ignore-running allows to bypass that

So far, applying those steps, I can properly update an underlying Firefox but it's still not reproducing, new process are properly referring to /snap/firefox/<REV>/

Can't repro either when trying to launch a second instance ...

Comment 7

[:gerard-majax]

While I can snap revert snapd to get back to an older version of snapd, but building and installing my own firefox snap does not update it on snap refresh snapd firefox, so I can't really reproduce the upgrade path itself ...

Comment 8

[Nika Layzell [:nika] (ni? for response)]

IIRC this is actively being worked on by :gerard-majax, so marking as S2

Comment 9

[:gerard-majax]

The telemetry data available at https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/queries/83030#205763 shows very rare occurrences of this, much rarer than using the deb package. We need more time for population to grow more and a few more releases to see the impact, but it could just be a blip due to snapd itself: as Olivier mentionned in comment 2, snapd 2.55.3+ should include fixes to avoid performing live upgrades of the code, so there should be no reason this happens anymore there.

Comment 10

[:gerard-majax]

The error in bug 1772902 sounds like the behavior there which is crashing could relate to this problem

Comment 11

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

The bug assignee didn't login in Bugzilla in the last months and this bug has severity 'S2'.
:jld, could you have a look please?
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 12

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

This is annoying, but not blocking major functionality, so it shouldn't be S2.

Comment 13

[:gerard-majax]

So according to telemetry we still have a few cases over versions. Very low volume but ...