277556 - "not a valid install package" when installing Googlebar and other extensions

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Installer: XPInstall Engine, defect)

Description

[Dennis Buley]

Tried to download, Googlebar, dictionary and another extension. Keeps coming up
as "not a valid install package". Have Firefox w/adblocker as only extension.

Comment 1

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

1. what is your useragent (Help->About Mozilla Firefox->bottom 2 lines) ?
2. do you use an installer or zip build ?

Comment 2

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Did you set disk cache to 0? If yes, this is the same as bug 262854.

Reporter, please use the bugzilla helper to report bugs next time
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided>

Comment 3

[Don Bolton]

Attachment: wordpad text file confirming and doccumenting bug

I'm just a dangerous end user:-) (Database geek) But I'd assumed the bug was
related to 2 of my systems still running PR. Found that not the case but did
work around it though spent several hours in the process.

Don "things to do during freezing rainstorms" Bolton

Comment 4

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Please post short comments as comments, not as attachments. From the attachment:
--
I can confirm this bug exists as I've encountered it on 3 different computers. 2
running Xp Pro and one running XP Home. Its consistant in versions 1.0PR and 1.0
production. I even upgraded one from PR to the production release tonight to try
to workaround. 

I finally got my desired extensions by going to http://extensionroom.mozdev.org
and downloading them from there. I got the Yahoo companion from Yahoo's link to
the extension.

I had to use these backdoors on McSearch Prievew, IE View, and Yahoo Companion

It appears the utility doesn't always catch the argument name of extension for
install. (I saw this read undefined on one of my systems).

THe resulting error is

https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/undefined

because: Not a valid install package

This has occurred consistently since the extensions selection system changed.

Don "at least I could find the workarounds" Bolton

Comment 5

[Rod Murray]

(In reply to comment #4)
Get same error: "not a valid install package". Can't install any extensions from
the Mozilla site since upgrading to 1.0.1 (now 1.0.2). Running Win2k.

Comment 6

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Sounds like u.m.o bug to me... Can you still reproduce this? If so, what URL
does this happen on?

Comment 7

[nrlz]

Attachment: testcase using InstallTrigger to install non existent xpi

This is caused by installing a non-existent XPI file using InstallTrigger.
Maybe InstallTrigger should begin downloading the file before showing the
Install window or the error message in the Extension window ("not a valid
package") should be more explicit.

Comment 8

[nrlz]

Attachment: testcase using InstallTrigger to install non existent xpi

Problem with previous testcase. This one's correct.

P.S. This may not be the only reason. But it is the reason for me on UMO.

Comment 9

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Happens in Suite, too (worth checking because the Firefox UI doesn't report
install errors very well). Somewhere in the back-end the distinction between
DOWNLOAD_ERROR (-228) and CANT_READ_ARCHIVE (-207) is getting lost.

Comment 10

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Confirming on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5)
Gecko/20051006 Firefox/1.4.1 ID:2005100614

Why hasn't anybody worked on this? It's still present in Fx 1.5b2.

Comment 11

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Confirming on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5)
> Gecko/20051006 Firefox/1.4.1 ID:2005100614

This was found on the "Nightly Tester Tools" extension (updating from 0.7.9.8 ->
0.7.9.9). "Nightly Tester Tools" (currently 0.7.9.8) says there's a new update
for 0.7.9.9 in the Extension Manager, yet when I click "Update Now", it does
nothing (then).

If I click "Update Now" quickly enough, it opens the options window.

However, when I wait for a while, I receive "Nightly Tester Tools (0.7.9.8) -
Install completed successfully" but then a dialog popped up and says "Firefox
could not install the file at
http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/content/firefox/buildid/nightly-0.7.9.9.xpi
because: Not a valid install package".

oh, and while I have the "Extension Manager" up, it continually tries to install
it every couple of minutes resulting in the same error msg.

I don't think it really matters with the extension. It seems that if you have
any type of download error, Fx detects it as "Not a valid install package,"
which is wrong.

Several bugs here:
1. Cross between DOWNLOAD_ERROR (-228) and CANT_READ_ARCHIVE (-207) (as dveditz
pointed out).
2. Showing "Install completed successfully" even when not successful.
3. Clicking the "Update Now" button quickly enough opens the options menu for
the extension (yes, it's supposed to do that when you double-click the
extension, but it shouldn't do that when you are clicking the Update Now button
itself).

Comment 12

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

oh, I forgot to mention that (as of this moment),
http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/content/firefox/buildid/nightly-0.7.9.9.xpi
won't load if you try to go to it via the browser (meaning the site is down).

Comment 13

[nrlz]

Are we still getting this error or has this been fixed?

A temporarily workaround would be to detect the error code that is returned by InstallTrigger.install() and then display a better notification. Perhaps we could redirect the user to the URL of the file? If it was a 404 error, then the user would see the 404 error page and maybe understand what was going on, right?

+ function installCallback(url, code) {
+   if(code == 207) {  //Not a valid install package
+     location.href = url;
+   }
+ }

  function install( aEvent, extName, iconURL)  {   
    var params = new Array();
    params[extName] = {
      URL: aEvent.target.href,
      IconURL: iconURL,
      toString: function () { return this.URL; }
    };
-   InstallTrigger.install(params);
+   InstallTrigger.install(params, installCallback);

    try {
      var p = new XMLHttpRequest();
      p.open("GET", "/core/install.php?uri="+aEvent.target.href, true);
      p.send(null);
    } catch(e) { }
    return false;
  }

Comment 14

[Daniel Ovsiannikov]

Couldn't install Hide Searchbar from here: http://gratisdei.com/FF.htm. But if I save it to disk it get installed.

Fx 1.5

Comment 15

[Andreas Wuest]

I can confirm this behaviour with Firefox 1.5.0.6 on Windows. This with an XPI served by our local server (and yes, the content-type is set correctly). After 3 or 4 retries, the installation works.

Comment 16

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

We need more instrumentation or logging here to see what the nature of the failure is.  Sounds like it might be a race between network I/O and the install, but it's hard to tell from this height.

Dan: what sorts of instrumentation in xpinstall would tell us more about this?

Comment 17

[Andreas Wuest]

shaver prompted me to add the following comment:

When extensions don't want to update themselves, i.e. there is a newer version available, but the extensions manager simply reports that there is no newer version, you can simply clear the cache, and try to reupdate. The browser does not have to be closed (although shaver reported that the update.rdf might also get cached by the RDF side, which would indeed require a restart to clean the RDF cache).

On a side note, even if the update.rdf is loaded into a browser window and is reportedly the latest version, the update mechanism still seems to use an older version. But as I said, clear the cache, and then reupdate, and it should work now.

Comment 18

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

dveditz thinks this might be a problem with a mirror that's returning an error code.  Andreas: are you seeing such errors in your local webserver logs when the error happens?  An ethereal/tcpdump trace of the package fetching traffic might be helpful here as well.

Comment 19

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

This might be related to bug 346869 which came from me getting http 416 errors when attempting to install an extension which xpinstall interprets as a failure.

Comment 20

[IDEVFH]

Receiving error Not a valid install package -207 for download of my add-on.
I've uploaded several times but no success.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/161796/

Comment 21

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #20)
> Receiving error Not a valid install package -207 for download of my add-on.
> I've uploaded several times but no success.
> 
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/161796/

That is probably just the mirror problem that AMO were experiencing last night. If you still see it please file a new bug.

This bug has had no activity in over 3 years and the original reports don't seem to have been followed up so I'm closing it as incomplete.