927839 - Earlybird update status indicator gets stuck at Applying update

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Robert Miles]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130814063812

Steps to reproduce:

Earlybird 26.0a2 (2013-10-15) told me an update was available; I told it to install the update.  (On my Windows 7 computer, not the computer I am entering this from.)

BOINC running in the background, with a workunit that must not be interrupted
unless I want to lose all it has done in the last 4 months.


Actual results:

It reached the Applying update stage.  About 40 minutes later, the circle is still spinning.  The thunderbird.exe *32 process is using no CPU time at all.


Expected results:

The update should have finished much faster - under 5 minutes.

Comment 1

[hannu.nyman]

This has happened to me also during the past 2 weeks. Approximately.

If I open Help About in Earlybird and it notices an update, it starts to fetch the update and to apply it. But it gets stuck at the "Appying update" phase, and the indicator just continues to rotate for ever. If I then close Help About and re-open it, the expected Restart button is then there.

Windows 7 x64.

Earlybird ID: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/26.0a2 ID:20131017004001 CSet: ddb6e3745674

Comment 2

[hannu.nyman]

Bug title might be edited to something like: "Earlybird update status indicator gets stuck at Applying update"

Comment 3

[Robert Miles]

More details:  After about an hour, I closed Earlybird.  The expected button for approving changes was then there, and worked properly in starting the update.

Comment 4

[hannu.nyman]

This bug should really be renamed to attract more attention to the issue. The problem is still there one week later: the Earlybird update hangs every day.

Having the Earlybird update indicator to continuously hang makes no sense. There aren't too many alpha/beta users to discourage them.

The issue has also been mentioned on the forum by other users: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2761145

Comment 5

[hannu.nyman]

The version bump to 27.0a2 did not help.
Earlybird update still gets stuck every day.

I am wondering it this is platform-dependent? Win7 x64? The Windows UAC prompt also materialises along each update, which I think should not be happening if the maintenanceservice works ok. (Firefox Aurora upadtes quite nicely. No prompt, no hassle, so this is something related to Thunderbird.)

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/27.0a2 ID:20131031004001 CSet: 2a50fe892e2f

Comment 6

[hannu.nyman]

I looked into Thunderbird settings and noticed that somehow app.update.service.enabled was set "false". Toggling that option back to default "true" made updates to get applied normally. I have no idea that I would have toggled that option earlier, so this is a bit strange. 

Apparently having that option set as "false" can make the update process to look hanged. Earlybird updates worked normally for me until somewhere in late September / early October, so this behaviour was possibly something that surfaced after the previous version bump (or along it).

Comment 7

[Andy Goth]

The same is true for me.  64-bit Windows 7.  app.update.service.enabled is also "user set" to false, even though I never used about:config before in Earlybird/Thunderbird.  It's too soon to say whether this fixes the problem; that'll have to wait a day or so until the next update becomes available.

Comment 8

[Robert Miles]

Workaround found:  After "Applying update" for perhaps 5 minutes, shut down Thunderbird by clicking on the X in the red box at the upper right corner of the Thunderbird window.  Then restart Thunderbird and watch the update finish (may need your approval first).

Problem appears to be due to the window asking for update approval often being hidden behind the window that started the update, and therefore not giving the user a reasonable chance of approving it without restarting Thunderbird first.

Problem seen on both Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you still see this with version 31?

Comment 10

[Robert Miles]

Not seen with more recent versions - appears to have been with one day's Earlybird version only.

Comment 11

[Robert Miles]

Exception - approval window is still often hidden behind the main window.  Workaround above still works.

The Earlybird or Thunderbird at the bottom of the screen sometimes indicates that more than one window is in use by the program; clicking on this icon allows selecting the approval window and bringing it out of hiding.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the update. Your remaining issue would be a differnt issue.