"Check for Tor Browser update" doesn't seem to do anything
So I have Tor Browser 8.0 (Linux) installed. I read about the new 8.0.1, so I started my Tor Browser, the about:tor page told me it's 8.0, so I click on the onion, and go down to Check for Tor Browser update, and click on it. The onion menu goes away. I wait for a bit.
I go click on the onion, click on check-for-update again. I do it four or five more times. I never see any indication that it noticed my request.
Is it secretly doing something in the background? Should we have some sort of "I got it, I'm doing what you asked for" feedback in the interface?
It's been about twenty minutes now and it doesn't seem to have checked for an update. Or if it did, it's being very quiet about doing it and/or what it found. :)
Activity
Clicking on "Check for Tor Browser Update" should open a new window saying "Looking for new versions of Tor Browser" and then say if a new version is available.
To see if it's doing something in the background, you can set
app.update.logto true, and then look at the browser console (which can be opened with Ctrl+Shift+J).Then it should show some lines such as:
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - testing write access /tmp/tb/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/UpdateInfo/update.test AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - able to apply updates AUS:SVC getCanStageUpdates - staging updates is disabled by preference app.update.staging.enabled AUS:SVC Checker:getUpdateURL - update URL: https://aus1.torproject.org/torbrowser/update_3/release/Linux_x86_64-gcc3/8.0.1/en-US AUS:SVC Checker: checkForUpdates, force: false AUS:SVC Checker:getUpdateURL - update URL: https://aus1.torproject.org/torbrowser/update_3/release/Linux_x86_64-gcc3/8.0.1/en-US AUS:SVC Checker:checkForUpdates - sending request to: https://aus1.torproject.org/torbrowser/update_3/release/Linux_x86_64-gcc3/8.0.1/en-US
Ok, I came back after sleeping and it offered me to restart. I declined, so I could debug this more.
Now I'm back where I was, where asking it to check for updates has no apparent effect.
I set app.update.log to true, and then clicked check-for-updates again, and ctrl-shift-j now has these lines:
[09-23 17:19:01] Torbutton WARN: no SOCKS credentials found for current document. [09-23 17:19:02] Torbutton WARN: no SOCKS credentials found for current document. AUS:SVC showUpdateDownloaded - Notifying observers that an update was downloaded. topic: update-downloaded, status: pending [09-23 17:19:44] Torbutton WARN: no SOCKS credentials found for current document. [09-23 17:19:45] Torbutton WARN: no SOCKS credentials found for current document.So it sounds like it is indeed doing something, and the problem for me is that it never pops up any of the windows that it's supposed to pop up -- except, eventually, the "an update is available, choose not now or restart tor browser" window in the top right.
(I wonder what the 'no socks credentials' complaint is about -- I don't think I was browsing other stuff at the time, so I guess this is some internal thing that Tor Browser does on a schedule. Or maybe the timing of those messages is too much of a coincidence.)
Do other people running Tor Browser 8.0 on linux (debian oldstable in my case) get some window in response to choosing check-for-updates?
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Replying to boklm:
You can also check for updates by going to Help -> About Tor Browser.
When I go to Help -> About Tor Browser, it gives me a big button, "Restart to update Tor Browser"
So that part at least is working. I'm curious what would have happened if I'd tried Help -> About Tor Browser first. :)
We will need to investigate further, but my guess is that Firefox's new update UX does not mesh well with the old "check for an update now" window (I don't think it is possible to open that window at all in recent versions of Firefox). Probably what is happening is the update is being quickly downloaded and the window does not tell you that, or maybe it was already downloaded. Look for the somewhat subtle upward pointing arrow that is overlaid on the "hamburger" menu along the right hand side of the browser toolbar; it will be present once the update has been downloaded and the browser is ready to restart. But note that no feedback is provided while an update is being downloaded; Mozilla simply left that concept out of their UI as far as I can tell.
Thanks to Antonela we do have plans to improve the overall update experience, but unfortunately we ran out of time for Tor Browser 8.0. See #25694 (moved).
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I think that I have been able to reproduce this issue. It seems that "Check for Tor Browser update" is working correctly when the update download has not been started yet (and the browser does not know yet that an update is available). However, if the update has already been downloaded, and the browser is ready to restart to apply the update, "Check for Tor Browser update" is not working in that case.
Trac:
Parent: N/A to #25694 (moved)-
Here is a fix for review: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/brade/tor-browser.git/commit/?h=bug27828-01&id=a79c1cdea0e1e73cae8ebafc27b3423828fa1816
Changes to the Firefox code between ESR 52 and 60 caused the update "wizard" window to not be opened if the update had already been downloaded (updater state == pending), but Torbutton relies on the old behavior. Our patch works around the problem, although in the long run I expect Mozilla to remove the XUL-based update window entirely (as well as the
app.update.doorhangerpref). For reference, here is the Torbutton code that calls theshowUpdateDownloaded()function: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torbutton.git/tree/src/chrome/content/torbutton.js?h=maint-2.0#n595Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, TorBrowserTeam201811R added
Status: new to needs_review mentioned in issue #28075 (moved)
mentioned in issue #28885 (moved)
mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#28075 (closed)