Transition away from 32bit OS X Tor Browser builds
We are about to transition away from 32bit OS X builds. This ticket is tracking the things that remain to do.
Activity
It seems we need to show OS X users (using OS X < 10.8) a custom website explaining them what is going on and linking them to the new bundles (provided their Mac supports 64 bit builds). We need to make sure that
-the website gets properly set up -that all users with OS X >= 10.8 transition smoothly to the new 64bit builds -that users who switched to 64bit builds don't see the website again if there is a new update available -all this works for the switch of stable users to 64 bit builds, too.
This looks like a good list to me. The changes to update-responses that boklm made earlier (based on requirements discussed on IRC) are here:
The config file is here:
https://people.torproject.org/~boklm/tmp/4.5-alpha-1/config.yml
What is not addressed (as gk and I discussed on IRC) is "users who switched to 64bit builds don't see the website again if there is a new update available". We need to avoid including the minSupportedOSVersion parameter in the XML that is returned to osx64 users (e.g., someone on 10.6.x or 10.7.x could be running a 64-bit build).
Here is a new version of the patch: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/boklm/tor-browser-bundle.git/commitdiff/20623d486854403dacc08ae953cc20ebcfeb6802
With this one, we should have minSupportedOSVersion only in the osx32 responses.
In the config file, we should set minSupportedOSVersion under osx32 (instead of osx64 previously): https://people.torproject.org/~boklm/tmp/4.5-alpha-1/config_v2.yml
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Thanks for working on this. The revised patch looks good (and brade and I tested it a little).
One thing we will need to keep in mind: the update service (in the browser) only has support for one "detailsURL". That means that a 4.0.x user who is running Mac OS 10.8 or newer will also be pointed to the same detailsURL as one who is running 10.6 (https://www.torproject.org/TODO-mac-manual-upgrade-info) in your sample config.yml file. So we will need to make sure that the content on that page makes sense both for people who cannot upgrade (32-bit system) and those who can (64-bit) system. This is less than ideal, but we cannot fix the deployed browsers.
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Replying to mcs:
Thanks for working on this. The revised patch looks good (and brade and I tested it a little).
One thing we will need to keep in mind: the update service (in the browser) only has support for one "detailsURL". That means that a 4.0.x user who is running Mac OS 10.8 or newer will also be pointed to the same detailsURL as one who is running 10.6 (https://www.torproject.org/TODO-mac-manual-upgrade-info)
Why? I thought
minSupportedOSVersionsolves this problem for us in a way that only users with OSX < 10.8 AND a 32 bit Tor Browser get to see the URL?That said I think I like the idea for the alpha to just point to an anchor tag on the blog post explaining the issue and containing instructions/links for users affected by this problem. Meanwhile we can think about solving this problem as good as we can for the stable upgrade.
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Replying to gk:
Why? I thought
minSupportedOSVersionsolves this problem for us in a way that only users with OSX < 10.8 AND a 32 bit Tor Browser get to see the URL?The detailsURL is also available (via a "More Information" link or something similar) on the window that is displayed when an automated update check prompts the user to update. I don't think it is available from the About box. There really should be a "detailsURL" and a "unsupportedOSDetailsURL" but it is too late now. We could fix this for the future; is it worthwhile to do so? (I think it is trivial to implement).
That said I think I like the idea for the alpha to just point to an anchor tag on the blog post explaining the issue and containing instructions/links for users affected by this problem. Meanwhile we can think about solving this problem as good as we can for the stable upgrade.
Pointing to a blog post rather than deploying a new page is a very good idea.
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Things mentioned on #tor-dev today that we still need to do:
- Include a warning in the TB 4.0.5 blog post.
- Possibly tweet the following blog post again: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/end-life-plan-tor-browser-32-bit-macs
- Possibly send a message to tor-announce Recorded here so we remember them.
I had forgotten the history in this ticket before posting this on tbb-dev: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2015-March/000250.html.
It sounds like 5-6 months ago, our plan was to update 10.8+ MacOS users automatically, because we knew for sure they would be 64bit.
However, it while looking up info while writing that mailing list post, I found at least one page that says that 10.6 and 10.7 machines should be able to execute 64 bit apps even while running 32 bit kernels: http://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/28/road_to_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_64_bit_to_the_kernel
Is that true? Should we try to be smarter about detecting if the CPU can actually do this? Or is this likely to be risky?
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Replying to mikeperry:
I had forgotten the history in this ticket before posting this on tbb-dev: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2015-March/000250.html.
It sounds like 5-6 months ago, our plan was to update 10.8+ MacOS users automatically, because we knew for sure they would be 64bit.
However, it while looking up info while writing that mailing list post, I found at least one page that says that 10.6 and 10.7 machines should be able to execute 64 bit apps even while running 32 bit kernels: http://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/28/road_to_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_64_bit_to_the_kernel
Is that true? Should we try to be smarter about detecting if the CPU can actually do this? Or is this likely to be risky?
There are only some machines were 10.6 and I think 10.7 is running on that are 32bit only (my testing mac book with 10.6.8 can handle 64bit Tor Browser just fine) but detecting that AND getting our update machinery behave accordingly is not trivial which is why we decided to go that road. I think this is still fine.
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According to this article: http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/os-x-market-share-statistics-1-in-5-macs-still-unsupported/ about 20% of Macs are running 10.7 or older. It is difficult to say how many are running a 64-bit OS and how many could boot a 64-bit kernel. Hopefully the "out of date" notification from Tor Browser will be enough to prompt the 10.6 and 10.7 users to look into upgrading their OS or buying a new computer. But there will be complaints :)