1848393 - app.update.interval does not work as expected

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

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

The user b.loeffler reports that setting app.update.interval to 86400 (24 hours in seconds) does not result in update checks being reduced to once per day.

Comment 1

[b.loeffler]

Hello,
any updates so far?
I literally can't use firefox any more. Multiple update searches happen every couple minutes.
I need to use a different browser right now. Its no use, firefox is totally broken right now.
Since the last updates it got unfortunately worse.

Comment 2

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

(In reply to b.loeffler from comment #1)

I literally can't use firefox any more. Multiple update searches happen every couple minutes.

That doesn't make sense to me. Even assuming that changing app.update.interval doesn't work, there shouldn't be any situation where update checks happen that often. Based on the context from Bug 1835223, I am guessing that you are judging that an update check is happening because the browser is freezing. But it seems more likely to me that there are multiple things triggering freezes rather than there being update checks happening that frequently. Is there something that you are seeing besides the freezing that is suggesting that update checks are happening this frequently?

To be sure, you could turn on logging and check the logs:

1. Navigate to about:config and set app.update.log to true.
2. Open the Browser Console either with the hotkey Control+Shift+J (Command+Shift+J on macOS), or via Hamburger Menu->More Tools->Browser Console
3. In the Filter textbox at the top, enter AUS:SVC CheckerService:getUpdateURL - update URL in order to see just one log message per update check.

Do you see that log message happening multiple times every couple of minutes?

Comment 3

[Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) {{ AFK in July }}]

We have started seeing some more intermittent failures due to Firefox connecting to the update server in automation
Bug 1754363 and bug 1846976. This might indicate that something could be wrong with the update interval.

Comment 4

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

I still haven't had time to confirm this on my own machine, but fixing a misbehaving pref that isn't exposed in settings is generally going to be an S3, I think.

Comment 5

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

Clearing stale NI.