1963073 - Firefox doesn't notify automatically the user when a newer version is available

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1940481

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[bugzzzz]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:137.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/137.0

Steps to reproduce:

Connect Firefox to internet.

Actual results:

Nothing particular about the availability of 137.0.2 new release.

Expected results:

Right now, I am running Firefox-137.0, a new tab or window should have opened proposing the download of Firefox-137.2 which is available at https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/download/thanks/

In Edit>Parameters>General>Firefox updates, the radio-button "Allow Firefox to verify updates avalability (translated from french) is quoted.

Comment 1

[Chris DuPuis]

Hello, thanks for your report.

This page describes how Firefox notifies about updates:
https://support.mozilla.org/kb/update-firefox-latest-release

Is this not working for you?

Comment 2

[bugzzzz]

Until now, just quoting "Allow Firefox to verify updates avalability..." was enough to be notified when a new release was available.
Now, I have quoted "Install updates automaticaly" knowing that Firefox cannot install itself automaticaly because it doesn't know where and how to be installed.
This is why I had prefered to be simply notified and then run my personnal installer.

Il'll check the result when a new release is available.

Comment 3

[Max Christian Pohle [:/dev/max]]

Thank you for checking again. While we wait, I will assign the needinfo back to you so we can keep track of this.

Comment 4

[bugzzzz]

I just checked on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/linux/ what was the latest release number and found a firefox-138.0.1.tar.xz available.
I can now confirm that while I'm running the 137.0.2 (64 bits) release, I have not received the usual notification.
This time, I have allowed Firefox to automatically install updates in Edition > Parameters > General > Configure how Firefox installs updates.

And contrary to what is stated in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/update-firefox-latest-release, opening Help > About Firefox window does not check (or notifies) for updates.

In addition, it might be useful to have a link to the Firefox repository which contains all the versions and their date of online release.

Comment 5

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

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:dmcintosh, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 6

[Duncan McIntosh [:dmcintosh]]

Does the About dialog say that you're up-to-date, or does it not mention anything about updates? (Maybe attach a screenshot?)

Also, you said you have a personal installer that you use to update Firefox. Does it do anything aside from extracting the tarball? Where on the filesystem does the installation end up?

As for the Firefox versions repository, I think https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ looks up-to-date. (You should run the latest version if you can, of course!)

Comment 7

[Duncan McIntosh [:dmcintosh]]

Also, the release notes mention the release date for each version, e.g. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/138.0.3/releasenotes/ released on 2025-05-13.

Comment 8

[bugzzzz]

The About dialog (screenshot in attachment) says that "Firefox est mis à jour par une autre instance" (i.e. updated by another instance !?) but does not mention that 138.0.3 is available.
My personnal installer just extract the tarball in /usr/local, remove the old symbolic link and create a new link to the last version.

Comment 9

[bugzzzz]

Attachment: Screenshot of Help > About Firefox

Comment 10

[Duncan McIntosh [:dmcintosh]]

Thank you! The 'updated by another instance' part is very interesting. I'm guessing you don't have any other Firefox windows open?

I'm wondering if this could be a permissions issue.

• What are the permissions/owner/group for /usr/local, /usr/local/(firefox install), and /usr/local/(firefox install)/firefox?
• What happens if you run touch /usr/local/(firefox install)/test-file-for-1963073.txt as the user you run Firefox with?

(replace (firefox install) with the actual folder Firefox is installed in)

As one last thing, would you mind taking an update log?

1. Navigate to about:config.
2. Set app.update.log to true.
3. Open the Browser Console either with the hotkey Control+Shift+J, 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. You should see some messages appear in the console.
6. Once the update check has completed, copy the messages out of the Browser Console and attach them to this bug.

Comment 11

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

Edit: Never mind I got this wrong. I misread the bug. Sorry!

(In reply to Duncan McIntosh [:dmcintosh] from comment #10)

Thank you! The 'updated by another instance' part is very interesting. I'm guessing you don't have any other Firefox windows open?

It may very well be that they do not. This problem is caused by Firefox trying to launch a new process and discovering that the new process is the wrong version. We don't actually know that it was another instance of Firefox. And, in this case, it sounds like the update was installed manually.

---

(In reply to bugzzzz from comment #8)

My personnal installer just extract the tarball in /usr/local, remove the old symbolic link and create a new link to the last version.

This makes it sound very possible that the old instance can't find its binary to launch new processes because the path it's using includes that link. If so, we could potentially address that by getting resolving the links on startup and caching the path. But I suspect that the actual fix for this is gonna be Bug 1609882/Bug 1705217 rather than going to the trouble to handle this one case differently.

Comment 12

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

You might be able to verify this by opening about:support in Firefox and checking if the path to the installation includes that link. I bet it does.

Comment 13

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

Oops, I misread the bug. I'm sorry about that. Disregard the last two comments.

Comment 14

[bugzzzz]

@Duncan McIntosh :

I'm guessing you don't have any other Firefox windows open?

I'm not sure I understand "other Firefox windows open".
I regularly have 2 or 3 profiles running at the same time.
Each of them may contain up to 20 windows opened. Some windows sometimes contain 1 hundred tabs.
Usually, I Ctrl-z the profiles I am not using because my computer slows down.

permissions/owner/group

$ ll /usr/local/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4,0K mars  27 07:46 firefox-137.0/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4,0K avril 14 13:25 firefox-137.0.2/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4,0K mai    1 00:51 firefox-138.0.1/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4,0K mai   12 16:52 firefox-138.0.3/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   15 mai   17 13:36 firefox-latest -> firefox-138.0.3/
$ ll /usr/local/firefox-138.0.3/
total 218M
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K May 12 16:47 browser/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K May 12 16:47 defaults/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K May 12 16:47 fonts/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K May 12 16:47 gmp-clearkey/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K May 12 16:47 icons/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  899 May 12 15:45 application.ini
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4.2M May 12 16:36 crashreporter*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  189 May 12 16:35 dependentlibs.list
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5.4K May 12 16:36 firefox*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 785K May 12 16:36 firefox-bin*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5K May 12 16:41 firefox-bin.sig
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5K May 12 16:41 firefox.sig
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  25K May 12 16:36 glxtest*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.3M May 12 16:36 libfreeblpriv3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.6M May 12 16:36 libgkcodecs.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 175K May 12 16:36 liblgpllibs.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.7M May 12 16:36 libmozavcodec.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 615K May 12 16:36 libmozavutil.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4.5K May 12 16:36 libmozgtk.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 182K May 12 16:36 libmozsandbox.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.4M May 12 16:36 libmozsqlite3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  12K May 12 16:36 libmozwayland.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 215K May 12 16:35 libnspr4.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 780K May 12 16:36 libnss3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 190K May 12 16:36 libnssutil3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  17K May 12 16:35 libplc4.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  13K May 12 16:35 libplds4.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 173K May 12 16:36 libsmime3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 360K May 12 16:36 libsoftokn3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 438K May 12 16:36 libssl3.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 156M May 12 16:36 libxul.so*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5K May 12 16:41 libxul.so.sig
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   19 May 12 16:52 locale.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  39M May 12 16:52 omni.ja
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 835K May 12 16:36 pingsender*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  167 May 12 16:35 platform.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5K May 12 16:52 precomplete
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 May 12 16:36 removed-files
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  132 May 12 16:35 update-settings.ini
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  89K May 12 16:36 updater*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  429 May 12 16:52 updater.ini
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  19K May 12 16:36 vaapitest*

$ touch /usr/local/test-file-for-1963073.txt
touch: cannot touch '/usr/local/test-file-for-1963073.txt': Permission denied

update log :

AUS:SVC Logging current UpdateService status:
AUS:SVC UpdateService.canUsuallyCheckForUpdates - able to check for updates
AUS:SVC UpdateService.canCheckForUpdates - unable to check for updates, unable to acquire update mutex
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - testing write access /usr/local/firefox-138.0.3/update.test
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - unable to apply updates without write access to the update directory. Exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80520015 (NS_ERROR_FILE_ACCESS_DENIED) [nsIFile.create]" nsresult: "0x80520015 (NS_ERROR_FILE_ACCESS_DENIED)" location: "JS frame :: resource://gre/modules/UpdateService.sys.mjs :: testWriteAccess :: line 452" data: no]
AUS:SVC getCanStageUpdates - unable to apply updates because another instance of the application is already handling updates for this installation.
AUS:SVC Elevation required: false
AUS:SVC Other instance of the application currently running: true
AUS:SVC Current update state: STATE_IDLE
AUS:SVC Downloading: false
AUS:SVC End of UpdateService status

Well, it seems there's at least a problem of write permission.
I point out that it would be a new issue since my installation script hasn’t changed in years.

Comment 15

[bugzzzz]

Attachment: about:support.png

@Robin Steuber :
The screenshot of about:support

Comment 16

[Duncan McIntosh [:dmcintosh]]

Thanks again for all the info! Unfortunately, you're looking at a few different bugs at the same time.

Your first problem is that Firefox can't grab a mutex due to missing write permission in the Firefox update directory; see bug 1940481. As of a few months ago, Firefox tries to ensure that only one process updates at a time on Mac and Linux (previously that was Windows-only, but it turns out corrupted updates are bad even on *nix.) To do this, it creates a file in the installation directory, but assuming you don't run Firefox as root that isn't possible. Until [edit: that bug is] fixed, that stops any attempt at updating on your system.

The second problem is that you have multiple instances open. Bug 1941788 tracks that Firefox won't do interactive updates if multiple instances are running, since overwriting Firefox while another instance is using it is a bad idea.

Unfortunately, I don't know when these will be fixed. My suggestion in the meantime would be subscribing to https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/announce/, which will tell you about new releases and betas.

Other than that, the best workaround I can think of is making /usr/local/firefox be read-write, and then only using a single profile at once, such that the entire Firefox autoupdater works as normal. I can guess that's probably a non-starter for you. Once bug 1940481 is fixed, there might be more options.

Sorry! (Marking as duplicate of bug 1940481 since that seems like the more relevant/larger issue; also duplicate of bug 1941788.)

Comment 17

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

Just to add one little thing, we also have an official repo so that your package manager can deal with this issue for you. More details here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux

Comment 18

[bugzzzz]

Thanks also to all who do this job !
Actually, at the beginning, my configuration (about:preferences) was set to only check for updates.
Each time I was running or opening Firefox, a tab opened to notify me that an update was available.
It is probably safer for the users to be notified when an update is released than giving them write permissions in the system tree/partition.

In the meantime, I have opened a tab on https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/announce/

@Robin Steuber : thanks for the tip, it's indeed a solution to be explored.