Open Bug 1642960 Opened 4 years ago Updated 4 years ago

The Firefox Browser is wrongly updating to the latest 77.0 version if a restart is performed after navigating to “about:support” page

Categories

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Desktop
All
defect

Tracking

()

Tracking Status
firefox76 --- affected
firefox77 --- affected

People

(Reporter: romartin, Unassigned)

Details

Attachments

(1 file)

Attached image 2020-06-03_13h50_46.gif

[Affected versions]:

  • Firefox Release channel.

[Affected Platforms]:

  • Windows 10 x64
  • macOS 10.15
  • Ubuntu Linux 18.04

[Prerequisites]:

  • Have a fresh Firefox Release 76.0.1 browser installed.
  • Have a new Firefox profile.

[Steps to reproduce]:

  1. Open the browser with the profile from prerequisites.
  2. Navigate to the “about:support” page and restart the browser.
  3. Navigate to the “about:support” page and observe the Firefox version.

[Expected result]:

  • The Firefox Browser Version is still 76.0.1.

[Actual result]:

  • The Firefox Browser Version is 77.0.

[Notes]:

  • The issue is also reproducible with the “about:config” page and the “about:telemetry” page.
  • The issue is not reproducible with the “about:newtab” page.
  • The issue is reproducible while the auto-updates were disabled.
  • Attached is a screen recording of the issue.

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Component: General → New Tab Page

Sounds to me like auto updates weren't actually disabled here. How did you do that?

Flags: needinfo?(romartin)

Hey Julien,

The auto-updates were stopped yesterday because of the dot release. I've tried the usual update flow:

  1. Open the Firefox 76.0.1 Release browser.
  2. Restart the browser.

Doing the above, resulted in the Firefox Browser to NOT update. However, if I navigated to the "about:config" page or the "about:support" page on the Firefox 76.0.1 and performed a browser restart afterward, I've noticed that the browser update is triggered and the Firefox Browser is now updated to 77.0.

I hope this answers your question. If I can help you with anything else, please NI me and will get back to you asap.

Flags: needinfo?(romartin) → needinfo?(jcristau)

Going to the "about firefox" window triggers a forced update check which would have upgraded you to 77 even when background updates were disabled. So I can't explain why it would say "Firefox is up to date" after 77 shipped.

Flags: needinfo?(jcristau)

Ah I just noticed what I wrote. You are 100% correct. Apologize for that! I was only restarting the browser without navigating to any of the "about:config", "about:support", or "about:telemetry pages and the update was not triggered on the Firefox 76.0.1 Release browser.

Looked into this a bit more and as it stands, the current behaviour seems to be in order.

(In reply to Julien Cristau [:jcristau] from comment #2)

Sounds to me like auto updates weren't actually disabled here. How did you do that?

This assessment might indeed be accurate.
Looked into the report a bit more in depth but, there wouldn't be an issue to (/or that we can at least) reproduce at the current date.

  • attempted to get in a range were users might not receive the update, but was unable as each one triggered the update(to 77.0.1 as for today) but no success;
  • checked the restart -> update scenario with several builds such as 73.0, 69.0, 64.0 on macOS 10.15 / Windows 10, so it doesn't appear to be a regressed behaviour.
    As far as the about:[....] pages go, they appear to trigger the update after restart and to be consistent throughout the older builds as well; checked and confirmed for about:support, about:telemetry, about:credits, about:about, about:crashes;
  • about:newtab appears to be indeed "excused" from the update as Robert mentioned;
  • did some additional checks with turning off updates via user.js preffs: user_pref("app.update.enabled", false); and user_pref("app.update.auto", false); and restarting the browser kept the builds from getting updated to the current version as expected.
Component: New Tab Page → Migration

Component: New Tab Page → Migration

The Migration component is about importing data from other browsers btw.

Sounds like this bug should be closed as invalid but I didn't read it closely.

Component: Migration → Untriaged

@MattN, I'm not sure if it should be closed as "Invalid" just yet. We should find out first if "about:[...]" pages should trigger a check for update in the first place. Cristian confirmed in comment 6 that this happens also on older versions and with the auto-updates active. While we confirmed that this happens also with the auto-updates paused at the moment of bug logging.

Anyone we asked about this before logging it, told us that it seems unusual for those pages to trigger the check for update action, especially when browser updates are stopped, as navigating to the "Help>About Firefox" page from Firefox menu does, and which is normal as it is considered a manual trigger. It doesn't seem the purpose of those pages to do that check in the back and update your browser after a restart.

Component: Untriaged → Application Update
Product: Firefox → Toolkit

(the video doesn't show how the restart was accomplished, but since there's a step in the STR that says to do that I'm assuming it was somehow not automatic; that would be a huge problem if automatic restarts were happening)

It's definitely not expected for merely opening any about: page to trigger an update check, and I can't seem to replicate it myself. The only intended scenario I can think of that might look like this is an automatic check that happens upon startup if the build is too old, and that check does bypass app.update.auto, but on release the threshold for a build being too old is two months, so unless I'm missing something that doesn't explain this report and it needs more investigation.

Hello @Molly,

Your assumption was correct, the restart was done manually. It seems that what happened was, when an “about: “ page (eg. about:config) was opened on an older build, a check for a new version was triggered. If a newer version was available, the build was downloaded in the background and installed, and after the manual restart was performed, the Firefox was already on the latest version. Is this presumption correct?
However, I cannot reproduce it anymore so that makes me think that we might need some special conditions in order to reproduce it, as I mentioned in the “Notes” section, the auto-updates were paused at that moment. Or it might have been something server related.

Flags: needinfo?(mhowell)

That description matches what I'm seeing in the screen capture; the hourglass cursor coming out of nowhere for a few seconds is a typical sign that an update is being staged in the background. The idea of opening an about: page being the trigger for a background update check is deeply confusing to me though; that and the fact that I can' t reproduce this either lead me to agree there must be some other factor that isn't obvious.

Flags: needinfo?(mhowell)
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