1874428 - Firefox Installs Update Even If Set to Check Only

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1892995

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:121.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have Firefox Installed, Window 121.0
2. Be configured to check for updates but don't install them: https://imgur.com/hc541Dl
3. Wait for update notification
4. Don't install, always click dismiss on the constant annoying reminder (that should only ever pop up once per update)
5. Find firefox installs anyway and breaks: https://imgur.com/WqGnZPW

Actual results:

Firefox ignores settings and does whatever it wants, not cool

Expected results:

Don't install updates unless I click install updates. I had to change this setting because with auto install enabled it would constantly install updates while fx was running, even though it shouldn't. Now I find it still does, just completely ignores my config

[dv: the image in step 5 shows the "An update to Firefox started in the background. You'll need to restart to finish the update." message. Added in case the imgur image goes away and to help text searches for this string]

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'WebExtensions::Untriaged' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Monica Chiorean]

I was not able to reproduce the issue on Win10x64/Win11x64 using settings mentioned on description, did you used a new and empty profile? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile? Thank you.

Comment 3

[Matt]

(In reply to Monica Chiorean from comment #2)

I was not able to reproduce the issue on Win10x64/Win11x64 using settings mentioned on description, did you used a new and empty profile? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile? Thank you.

No.

Comment 4

[Matt]

(In reply to Monica Chiorean from comment #2)

I was not able to reproduce the issue on Win10x64/Win11x64 using settings mentioned on description, did you used a new and empty profile? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile? Thank you.

How do I move this along? Regardless of profile, this happens every release cycle. I leave firefox open all week, never closes until the weekend, and eventually, it starts the update process, regardless of if I dismiss the notices or not.
Right now I am disabling the background service in hopes that it stops ignoring my choices in the next cycle.

Can I turn on logging or some other noise so this can finally be fixed?

Comment 5

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

I'm going to "confirm" this bug because I see enough similar complaints on SUMO, and I didn't see an existing bug that sounds like this.

The message you are seeing happens when the copy of Firefox you are running needs to load another copy of one of the binary files in the install directory and discovers that the version of the files on disk don't match the version in memory. At this point the running Firefox is stuck: if it loads the mismatched binary it will likely crash or corrupt data because the APIs don't match, but if it can't load the binary then it can't continue with whatever task it was doing. The Firefox you are currently running definitely didn't do this update, so where did it come from?

Disabling the maintenance service might help, but the service should have honored your pref if you are the only user on the machine.

• Are there other OS user accounts on the machine who might be using Firefox?
• Do you sometimes launch Firefox using another profile while your main one is running? (this would be uncommon for most users, but trips up us Firefox developers all the time as we test things)
• Is your computer part of a managed "enterprise" setting where the administrators might be pushing updates?

I don't know if it makes any difference, but did you install Firefox from our site (https://www.mozilla.org) or from the Microsoft Store? I know the initial installers are different, but I don't know if there's a different update mechanism for the MS Store versions.

Comment 6

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

I think there is a very good chance that this is a duplicate of Bug 1892995. The answers to the questions in comment 5 should tell us for sure.

Comment 7

[Matt]

(In reply to Daniel Veditz [:dveditz] from comment #5)

I'm going to "confirm" this bug because I see enough similar complaints on SUMO, and I didn't see an existing bug that sounds like this.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for picking this back up. I kind of just assumed it I wouldn't see traction since it's transient and I can't really say what the trigger is. Right now I have a pending update that I haven't applied, but the last update did the same thing of hanging my current session.

• Are there other OS user accounts on the machine who might be using Firefox?
  There technically are other user accounts (work laptop), however they aren't utilized. My user account is the only one that actively uses the machine.

• Do you sometimes launch Firefox using another profile while your main one is running? (this would be uncommon for most users, but trips up us Firefox developers all the time as we test things)
  No, I only have one profile. I tried with a new profile originally but the same issue persists.

• Is your computer part of a managed "enterprise" setting where the administrators might be pushing updates?
  Managed yes, but updated aren't pushed, only a single extension (webroot).

I don't know if it makes any difference, but did you install Firefox from our site (https://www.mozilla.org) or from the Microsoft Store? I know the initial installers are different, but I don't know if there's a different update mechanism for the MS Store versions.
Straight from Mozilla.

Disabling the maintenance service might help, but the service should have honored your pref if you are the only user on the machine.
Right now the service is set to manual. If you think it's worth trying, I will set it to disabled. The only reason this is an issue for me is because the open tabs are my tasks in a way. If this happens at the start of the day, it delays me by like 5, but middle of the day it's quite a bit worse when I'm trying to present.

Comment 8

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

From the answers in comment 7, I'm reasonably confident that this is a duplicate of Bug 1892995. To be more completely sure, when this problem happens next, could you check if an update has actually happened?

To do this, first, navigate to about:support (navigation to about: urls should continue to work, even when Firefox is in this state). What does the "Build ID" row say? Now open the installation directory (about:support lists the "Application Binary" path, if you can't remember where you installed it). Locate and open the file application.ini. There should be a row that says BuildID=.... What is that build id? Does it match the one listed in about:support?

After restarting the browser to get rid of the "Restart Required" page, please navigate back to about:support and click the "Show Update History" button. Does it list an update as having been installed around the time that "Restart Required" was shown?

Comment 9

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

I'm just going to go ahead and mark this as a duplicate of that bug. If more information suggests that this isn't the case, we can reopen this bug. But that's where all the evidence points at the moment.

Comment 10

[Matt]

(In reply to Robin Steuber (they/them) [:bytesized] from comment #8)

From the answers in comment 7, I'm reasonably confident that this is a duplicate of Bug 1892995. To be more completely sure, when this problem happens next, could you check if an update has actually happened?

To do this, first, navigate to about:support (navigation to about: urls should continue to work, even when Firefox is in this state). What does the "Build ID" row say? Now open the installation directory (about:support lists the "Application Binary" path, if you can't remember where you installed it). Locate and open the file application.ini. There should be a row that says BuildID=.... What is that build id? Does it match the one listed in about:support?

After restarting the browser to get rid of the "Restart Required" page, please navigate back to about:support and click the "Show Update History" button. Does it list an update as having been installed around the time that "Restart Required" was shown?

It finally happened again today.
Here's a video: https://streamable.com/lt63zv

Here's the data:

Before restarting while I could not browse:

Name: Firefox
Version: 127.0
Build ID: 20240606181944
Distribution ID:
Update Channel: release
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:127.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/127.0
OS: Windows_NT 10.0 19045
Launcher Process: Enabled
Multiprocess Windows: 5/5
Fission Windows: 5/5 Enabled by default
Remote Processes: 31
Enterprise Policies: Active
Google Location Service Key: Found
Google Safebrowsing Key: Found
Mozilla Location Service Key: Found
Safe Mode: false
Memory Size (RAM): 31.4 GB
Disk Space Available: 99.0 GB
Pointing Devices: Mouse

In the app ini file the build id did not match, it was BuildID=20240704121409.

After restart:

Name: Firefox
Version: 128.0
Build ID: 20240704121409
Distribution ID:
Update Channel: release
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128.0
OS: Windows_NT 10.0 19045
Launcher Process: Enabled
Multiprocess Windows: 5/5
Fission Windows: 5/5 Enabled by default
Remote Processes: 22
Enterprise Policies: Active
Google Location Service Key: Found
Google Safebrowsing Key: Found
Mozilla Location Service Key: Found
Safe Mode: false
Memory Size (RAM): 31.4 GB
Disk Space Available: 98.9 GB
Pointing Devices: Mouse

The update history does not include 127 or 128.

Comment 11

[Matt]

(In reply to Robin Steuber (they/them) [:bytesized] from comment #9)

I'm just going to go ahead and mark this as a duplicate of that bug. If more information suggests that this isn't the case, we can reopen this bug. But that's where all the evidence points at the moment.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1892995 ***

Sorry, I cannot edit comments here it seems. But you can tell me from that previous info if this is duplicate or not.