Firefox 102 update for linux doesn't work
Categories
(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: essin, Unassigned)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0
Steps to reproduce:
I'm running debian 10 in a vm. I has firefox esr 61 installed by default.
I went to the firefox and was offered to download an "installer" for 64-bit linux
I downloaded the tarball
Actual results:
This package is NOT an installer. There is a binary in the firefox directory called "updater" which is supposed to be (I assume) an executable. Running it only gives an error message:
sage: updater patch-dir install-dir apply-to-dir [wait-pid [callback-working-dir callback-path args...]]
Expected results:
There is no readme to explain how to update / replace Firefox ESR with the latest version.
There is no executable that actually updates anything.
This so=called updater is not an updater at all and can probably only be used correctly by whomever created the tarball. For ordinaly folks who are not mind-reading ninja, this thing is totally opaque.
Hardly the sort of thing that is going to encourage the average joe or jane to drop chrome and switch to firefox.
Come on guys, get real, get some to test these things that is not one of the developers.
|
||
Comment 1•3 years ago
|
||
The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Toolkit::Application Update' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
|
||
Comment 2•3 years ago
|
||
What you are describing isn't actually a Firefox issue, it's essentially a problem with the way Firefox was packaged. But since Debian packages Firefox for its package manager, you would need to talk to Debian about it. There isn't really anything that we can do here.
What distributions are supposed to do when they package Firefox for use with their package managers is to disable the Firefox updater, since Firefox ought to be updated via their package manager. It seems that they didn't disable it properly, it failed to self-update a number of times, and eventually prompted you to download a new copy.
You could try filing a bug with the Debian folks. You might want to check if the problem reproduces on Debian 11 first. It's quite possible that they have fixed this since then.
In the meantime, you should probably not try updating your Linux installation with one of the tarballs that we distribute. Those are only meant for people that use Firefox outside of a package manager (which we actually do not recommend). You probably should update your browser though. I'm a bit confused about you having ESR 61 since, according to our list of releases and our download archive, ESR 61 doesn't seem to exist. But Release Version 61 was released about 4 years ago.
I'm not sure whether you will be able to get the newest version of Firefox without updating Debian, but you may be able to update to something newer using Debian Package Management.
|
Reporter | |
Comment 3•3 years ago
|
||
Excuse me but this bug is not invalid. The question has nothing to do with distros (I happen to be using Fedora 36).
It has to do with the fact that the download does not include documentation of the updater command. There are 3 directories that must be supplied on the command line but there is no information about what values should be supplied.
This problem also affects the Thunderbird updater.
So all of your comments about distros are interesting but it does not alter the fact that there is a bug - lack of critical documentation - the updater download.
It is my contention that this is a bug and that you should fix it. It would only require adding a README or a few lines of text to the updater --help option to make clear how to correctly construct the command.
I hope that you will forgive me for being a bit cranky but these kinds of defects are easy to fix but tend to get overlooked because it is assumed that they will be intuitively obvious to the end-user and are therefore not worth the 10 minutes that it would take to rectify the problem.
I assure you that NOTHING is intuitively obvious to everyone and those with the knowledge should not be so stingy with it.
Perhaps you could explain patch-dir install-dir apply-to-dir if/when you reply to this comment so that I can proceed with my update.
Thank you
|
|
||
Comment 4•3 years ago
|
||
(In reply to Daniel Essin from comment #3)
Excuse me but this bug is not invalid. The question has nothing to do with distros (I happen to be using Fedora 36).
It has to do with the fact that the download does not include documentation of the updater command. There are 3 directories that must be supplied on the command line but there is no information about what values should be supplied.
There is no "updater command". What you downloaded is a tarball of an entire Firefox installation. Installing it just means extracting the tarball to a directory and now that directory is your updated Firefox installation. The update binary is used by Firefox as part of its self-update process. But
- The rest of the self update process is done by Firefox, so there is no combination of arguments that you can give the updater binary that will cause it to install an update unless you manually do the whole other half of the self-update process that Firefox would normally do. The reason that there is no documentation on what values should be passed to that binary is that you are never meant to invoke that binary yourself. Firefox will invoke the binary when the correct stage in the self-update process is reached.
- Unlike on macOS and Windows, on Linux we don't have any consistent way of elevating our permissions in order to install an update. Because of this, the self updater can only work if you install Firefox such that it has permissions to write to its own files. Which we do not actually recommend. This is why we recommend that you install and update by using your distribution's package manager.
- It especially not recommended that you try to update a package-manager-managed installation in any way other than by using the package manager.
Again, your Firefox installation should never have pointed you towards this tarball. And I believe that it wouldn't have if the updater had been disabled properly, as we recommend distributions do prior to packaging Firefox for their package manager.
Description
•