399603 - Restricted accounts cannot update, yet Firefox keeps trying

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 374900

(Toolkit :: Application Update, enhancement)

Description

[jddst19]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6

A restricted account, i.e., one without enough permissions to complete a software update, will nevertheless download and attempt to apply the updates, over and over, until the user turns the feature off.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Firefox for all users on an administrative account. Automatic updates default to "on".
2. Use Firefox from a restricted account. Automatic updates are still "on". 
3. Mozilla releases an update and Firefox downloads it. It attempts to install the files, fails, and notifies the user about the failure.  



Many unsophisticated users will not know what is going on.  They will keep dismissing the notifications about their failure to properly install the next version, and this is tiresome.  Even a sophisticated user, who has no administrative privileges on the machine, will be annoyed by this behavior, although they will know to turn off the update checks.

I consider there to be three good ways of dealing with this problem.  

1. Have the updater check for the required permissions before attempting to update.  It can notify the user once if it is unable to update, and give them the option to turn off (which should be default) future automatic updates, leaving it to the administrator to perform them.

2. Install an update NT service like Windows Update.  This service can run with the correct permissions to perform an update, and can notify the user agent that an update is complete and a browser restart is recommended.

3. Install new files in the User's Application Data directory (checking for permission, of course!) and use those files until the administrator catches up with the updates on the root copy.  Then, the unneeded files can be deleted.  In the common case, this would be fine, except it could lead to big trouble on terminal services machines.  Also, "roaming profiles" might need to keep several versions around if the machines they roam to do not have identical versions. In all, I think this is a bad default, but could be a good option for power users.