351577 - Background update download is slow for release builds due to backoff time to ease pressure on the mirrors

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060904 BonEcho/2.0b2

STR:
1. download and install a nightly release build
2. after a nightly build is released, check the help menu and notice that it says "downloading..." etc, and never changes to "apply"
3. after selecting the menu item, the download *begins* (see note below)

Expected behavior: It should actually be downloading, and prompt the user to apply the update, or at least finish the download and change the menu label to "Apply Downloaded Update Now...".

(note: Hm, I'm making an assumption that the download hasn't started, and/or finished. It may be that the download is actually started or complete, and selecting the menu item *restarts* the download)

Comment 1

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

Are you sure this isn't just that complete updates for Mac Universal are 16MB, so they take about 4 hours 15 minutes to download at the background rate at 64KB/min? Have you tried monitoring the file size of <firefox_appdir>\updates\0\update.mar ?

See also bug 350920.

Comment 2

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Are you sure this isn't just that complete updates for Mac Universal are 16MB,
> so they take about 4 hours 15 minutes to download at the background rate at
> 64KB/min? Have you tried monitoring the file size of
> <firefox_appdir>\updates\0\update.mar ?
> 
> See also bug 350920.
> 

The symptoms are so similar to bug 350920 that it's likely the same issue. However, two questions:

1. Why is the download rate so slow? If the update was a critical security issue, it'd be days before I got the update at this rate. When I load the update UI, the download is done in *seconds*.

2. Why don't I have this problem with Thunderbird? I actually noticed the issue because I recently got on the Thunderbird2 nightly channel, and I get prompted to apply the update every morning.

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

The current background download rate was chosen so that it wouldn't affect browsing speed, especially for people with slow (dial-up) connections. Maybe we should consider increasing it a bit, though...

Comment 4

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The symptoms are so similar to bug 350920 that it's likely the same issue.
> However, two questions:
> 
> 1. Why is the download rate so slow? If the update was a critical security
> issue, it'd be days before I got the update at this rate. When I load the
> update UI, the download is done in *seconds*.

I thought the plan was to not meltdown servers when millions of people update to a new release. Foreground updates go at full speed.
 
> 2. Why don't I have this problem with Thunderbird? I actually noticed the issue
> because I recently got on the Thunderbird2 nightly channel, and I get prompted
> to apply the update every morning.

Did you miss a build with Firefox and get the full update instead of the partial?

Comment 5

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > The symptoms are so similar to bug 350920 that it's likely the same issue.
> > However, two questions:
> > 
> > 1. Why is the download rate so slow? If the update was a critical security
> > issue, it'd be days before I got the update at this rate. When I load the
> > update UI, the download is done in *seconds*.
> 
> I thought the plan was to not meltdown servers when millions of people update
> to a new release. Foreground updates go at full speed.

In the case of a security update, this leaves open an extended window of exposure to known vulnerabilities. Possibly we need a tiered system, which allows full download speed for critical updates?

At a previous employer, we faced the meltdown problem wrt to updates, and solved it by having clients randomize the download start-time within a set period after notification of an update. However, this wouldn't solve the dial-up issue that Gavin mentioned.

> > 2. Why don't I have this problem with Thunderbird? I actually noticed the issue
> > because I recently got on the Thunderbird2 nightly channel, and I get prompted
> > to apply the update every morning.
> 
> Did you miss a build with Firefox and get the full update instead of the
> partial?
> 

Yes, I did get a full update. However, I can't recall the last time I was prompted to apply a browser update. I'm prompted with tbird updates every morning. Maybe filesize could account for this.. maybe tbird updates download faster?

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Dupe of bug 350920?

Comment 7

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

For nightly builds I lessened the backoff time but the backoff time is the same for release builds as when this bug was reported. If you still think this should be fixed please file a bug to get bouncer to randomize and I suspect that necko will need a bug to handle the modem issue Gavin mentioned.

Comment 8

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

No bugs filed as requested in comment #7 so I am resolving -> wontfix