2059880 - Firefox repeatedly prompts to install privileged helper on macOS 26.5.1; updater fails with "Server doesn't exist or doesn't provide correct selectors"

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[Joe Mustafa]

Attachment: firefox_bug_report_logs.zip

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/150.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Install Firefox 152.0.5 from the official Mozilla DMG.
Launch Firefox.
Accept the request to install the privileged helper.
Authenticate with an administrator password.
Wait for installation to complete.
Relaunch Firefox.Server doesn't exist or doesn't provide correct selectors.
Failed to connect to update server after several retries.

Actual results:

Prompt for helper just keeps coming up each time I launch firefox

Expected results:

The privileged helper installs successfully.

Firefox relaunches.

The helper prompt never appears again.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl]]

Apologies for the long delay here! Are you still able to reproduce this? If so, could you try the following so we can pin this down?

1. Restart your Mac.
2. Launch Firefox, enter your admin password when asked, and wait about three minutes.
3. Run the following in Terminal and attach the three files it writes to your Desktop:

log show --last 15m --info --predicate 'process == "org.mozilla.updater" OR (process == "mDNSResponder" AND (eventMessage CONTAINS "org.mozilla.updater" OR eventMessage CONTAINS "DNSServiceRegister" OR eventMessage CONTAINS "DNSServiceResolve"))' > ~/Desktop/updater-mdns.txt

python3 - > ~/Desktop/local-network-rules.txt <<'EOF'
import plistlib, subprocess
d = plistlib.load(open('/Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist', 'rb'))
objs = d['$objects']
R = lambda x: objs[x.data] if isinstance(x, plistlib.UID) else x
S = lambda x: R(x) if isinstance(R(x), str) else R(x).get('NS.string')
cls = lambda x: R(x['$class']).get('$classname') if isinstance(x, dict) and '$class' in x else None
users = dict(reversed(l.split()) for l in subprocess.run(['dscl', '.', 'list', '/Users', 'GeneratedUID'], capture_output=True, text=True).stdout.splitlines())
def rules(o, seen):
    o = R(o)
    if id(o) in seen:
        return
    seen.add(id(o))
    if cls(o) == 'NEPathRule':
        yield o
    elif isinstance(o, dict):
        for k, v in o.items():
            if k != '$class':
                for x in (v if isinstance(v, list) else [v]):
                    yield from rules(x, seen)
for o in objs:
    if cls(o) == 'NEConfiguration' and 'networkprivacy-' in S(o['Name']):
        print('User:', users.get(S(o['Name']).split('networkprivacy-')[1], '?'))
        for r in rules(o, set()):
            sid = S(r.get('SigningIdentifier'))
            if sid and sid.startswith('org.mozilla.'):
                print('  %-30s denied=%s chosen=%s' % (sid, R(r['DenyMulticast']), R(r['MulticastPreferenceSet'])))
EOF

ls -ln@d /Applications/Firefox.app /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox > ~/Desktop/firefox-permissions.txt
id >> ~/Desktop/firefox-permissions.txt
sw_vers >> ~/Desktop/firefox-permissions.txt

Could you also let us know whether you installed Firefox yourself, or whether your IT department manages it (for example through Jamf)?

Comment 5

[Yannis Juglaret [:yannis]]

Thanks for filing an issue. Moving to Toolkit :: Application Update since the privileged helper belongs to the macOS updater. Server doesn't exist or doesn't provide correct selectors is an error related to NSConnection, so this may be fixed or changed by bug 2054404, which moves the helper to NSXPCConnection. Setting S3 for now. Bug 2039475 may to be the same issue.