264508 - Need clear recommendation how Linux users could use "Software Update"

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Graveyard :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[Volkmar W. Pogatzki]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041014 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041014 Firefox/0.10.1

Recent nightly builds still show the availability of a patch to version 0.10.1.
Installing this patch on a M$-Windows system seems to perfectly work. Not so on
a Linux system if Firefox is correctly installed, i.e. all files are owned by root. 

The question is: How can a Linux (non root) user use the "Software Update"
function to apply a patch or to update Firefox?
I'm sure this isn't the safe way, since actually nobody ever should run a
browser as root. But as I didn't know about any recommendation how to do it
otherwise, I tried this:

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install the latest aviary build
2. Backup your profile 
3. "sudo" start Firefox using command "sudo /opt/firefox/firefox"
4. Check for updates and find patch
5. Install patch
6. Check your bookmarks, history and other profiled data (are still ok.)
7. Close Firefox and restart as "normal" user.

Actual Results:  
Bookmarks, history, preferences have been reset/overwritten.

Expected Results:  
User's profile should remain untouched by using the "Software Update" funktion.

Setting "critical" since user profiles could get lost/overwritten.

Comment 1

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

dupe of bug 236593 ?

 see also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205053#c28 about how Moz
thinks about sudo

Comment 2

[Volkmar W. Pogatzki]

(In reply to comment #1)
> dupe of bug 236593 ?
> 
>  see also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205053#c28 about how Moz
> thinks about sudo

I should have searched more carefully. Both bug 236593 and bug 205053#c28
already describe the technical background of this problem.

Maybe I'd better change this report's summary from

  "sudo" updating Firefox resets sudo user's profile.
to
  Need clear recommendation how Linux users could use "Software Update"

since this is the exact point of the problem. Spreading Firefox (to millions of
people) with such a great "Software Update" functionality should include some
hints how this could be used. Without an easy understandable How-To, many users
will start playing around (like me) and some of them may think "sudo" is the
best solution for their problem.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

->documentation

Comment 4

[Nilson Cain]

As per Shaver's recommendation on
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205053#c28 , I think we should use
`su -` instead of `sudo`.

To help clarify this to me, what is needed is documentation for the help viewer
in Firefox?

Comment 5

[Steffen Wilberg]

Is this enough?
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/browser/locales/en-US/chrome/help/prefs.xhtml#506

Comment 6

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Is this enough?

Yeah, I think so.