394894 - if the background update check silently fails, user won't know there isn't an update (until they manually check for updates)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 595455

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect, P3)

Description

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

if the background update check silently fails, user won't know there isn't an update (until they manually check for updates)

schrep mentioned that it is common (in europe?) to have a firewall that blocks outgoing https connections.

preed mentioned that he knows of someone at their work who has a proxy for outgoing http, but not https.

see also bug #390746, which would also silently fail (if your clock was off.)  we'd also silently fail for 404 issues in the background.

see also bug #393782, about showing errors to the user.  (I'd strongly recommend we do this on idle, see bug #351471)  

we could use that feature on unexpected errors like this bug covers.

Comment 1

[Mike Schroepfer]

Not sure if I should file a nwe bug - but we've talked before about having better real-world diagnostics to find out why updates fail.  In particular getting the update logs sent to us automatically whenever an update fails through either breakpad or during the next AUS ping...

Comment 2

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

We should consider this for FF3.1 along with a few related ones I filed. I would've nominated for "wanted3.1" rather than "blocking" if that were an option.

We may not want to report every time the check fails (users might be on a plane) but maybe after X failures or Y Days without connecting (a week or two?).

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Nice to have, yeah.

Would suggest that we pick a number of failures and show some UI after that, probably something as simple as "go to download page" which loads a URL with current version in the path.

Comment 4

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

Implemented a notification after x number of consecutive failures (default 10 and each app can set the value via a pref) in bug 595455