1807810 - browser does not update automatically

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[BT]

Attachment: preferences

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:108.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/108.0

Steps to reproduce:

browser does not auto update.
Tried toggling auto update from settings but the default setting remains as "Check for updates" Next, manually changed app.update.enabled and app.update.auto to true.

Actual results:

After changing the values in files in the preferences directory, firefox should automatically update.

Expected results:

Firefox did not automatically update and is instead prompting to download and install new versions manually.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Hi, thanks for the report! Could you please provide some additional information to help figure out what's going on?

Gets logs for the updater tool in Firefox

 1. Navigate to about:config.
 2. Set app.update.log to true.
 3. Open the Browser Console either with the hotkey Control+Shift+J (Command+Shift+J on macOS), or via Hamburger Menu->More Tools->Browser Console
 4.In the Filter textbox at the top, enter AUS:SVC to filter out everything except the update messages.
 5. Navigate to the "Update" section of about:preferences. It should automatically check for an update.
 6. Once the update check has completed, copy the messages out of the Browser Console and attach them to this bug.

Get logs from updater binary that actually applies the updates

 1. Navigate to about:support
 2. Find the "Update Folder" entry and click "Open Folder".
 3. Open the updates directory.
 4. Inside, you should find files named last-update.log and backup-update.log. Attach these files to this bug.

Comment 3

[BT]

(In reply to [e-mail] (:bhearsum) from comment #2)

Hi, thanks for the report! Could you please provide some additional information to help figure out what's going on?

Gets logs for the updater tool in Firefox

 1. Navigate to about:config.
 2. Set app.update.log to true.
 3. Open the Browser Console either with the hotkey Control+Shift+J (Command+Shift+J on macOS), or via Hamburger Menu->More Tools->Browser Console
 4.In the Filter textbox at the top, enter AUS:SVC to filter out everything except the update messages.
 5. Navigate to the "Update" section of about:preferences. It should automatically check for an update.
 6. Once the update check has completed, copy the messages out of the Browser Console and attach them to this bug.

Get logs from updater binary that actually applies the updates

 1. Navigate to about:support
 2. Find the "Update Folder" entry and click "Open Folder".
 3. Open the updates directory.
 4. Inside, you should find files named last-update.log and backup-update.log. Attach these files to this bug.

Checked Everything,

1. attaching output from Browser Console.
2. app.update.log was already set to true
3. There were no files with names 'last-update.log' and 'backup-update.log' in the update directory.

Comment 4

[BT]

Attachment: Console output

Comment 5

[BT]

Attachment: Update directory

Comment 6

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Thank you for the extra info! The browser console output shows that the user currently running Firefox is unable to write to the update directory (which is the same as the installation directory in this case).

This appears to be a build you installed yourself (as opposed to from your package manager). Where is Firefox installed to? Does the user you're running Firefox as have permissions on the install directory?

Comment 7

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

(Whoops - didn't mean to close this until we confirm the permissions...)

Comment 8

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

I would like to additionally know how you installed this installation of Firefox. Where did you download it from? What process did you use to install it to /usr/lib/firefox?

Comment 9

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

Closing this issue was we're unable to make progress without followup from the reporter.

BT: If you're able to follow up with the requested information we'll reopen the bug.