4 ms·

I see the "Firefox has updated, you must restart Firefox to continue using it" window every two weeks or so on Ubuntu. Though I never seen it on Fedora or Wind

by reisse 4y ago

I see the "Firefox has updated, you must restart Firefox to continue using it" window every two weeks or so on Ubuntu. Though I never seen it on Fedora or Windows, might be some quirks related to Ubuntu packaging.

franga2000 4y ago
This is a consequence of most Linux package managers not caring if apps are running and updating their files anyways. Firefox does this because it would crash otherwise (as most other software does when you pull its files from underneath it). If it happens frequently, you must have automatic live updates enabled - maybe you don't on Fedora and that's why you don't see that happen? On Windows, where no standard update mechanism exists, Firefox updates itself, so it does it only when it knows it's fully shut down (before it opens or after you close all windows).
- reisse 4y ago
  No, Fedora package manager (dnf) does the sane thing and not replaces app files from under the running apps by default - google "dnf offline upgrades". And for Windows there is standard update mechanism - Microsoft Store - which also does the same sane thing. So it's Ubuntu implementation problem, and not a Firefox one.
  - noisem4ker 4y ago
    >dnf offline upgrades Do I understand correctly that it is based on systemd's offline upgrade mode, i.e. installation is done at the following boot? If so, you can do that on Ubuntu too. I'm not sure how (perhaps by invoking apt-offline?), but at least KDE Discover does it on Kubuntu.
- toast0 4y ago
  > Firefox does this because it would crash otherwise (as most other software does when you pull its files from underneath it). Most software does fine, as long as it has already mapped in all of its libraries, those files can be unlinked in the filesystem, but will remain on disk in their current form. You do run into trouble if the software is part way through starting up and hasn't mapped all the libraries, or if you update the files rather than unlinking and copying new ones (at least, FreeBSD lets you update mmaped files and all processes will see the updates, which is usually not what you actually want when the files are code). Windows makes it very hard to update program files while programs are running, so it's not surprising Firefox endeavors to do updates while it's not running.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    Due to the way multi-process browsing works, Firefox at any time still needs to be able to launch new processes in order to accommodate new tabs, or thanks to site-isolation possibly even browsing to a different origin within the same tab. Once the old binaries have been unlinked, I assume there is no longer a sane way of launching a new process using the old binaries?
    - toast0 4y ago
      At start, you could start a new seed process, map all the libraries and what not, but don't do any browsing work... When it's time to launch an isolated process, fork the seed process and use the child. This doesn't seem insane to me, but might not be an easy thing to fit in to the large body of code that's already there. You still have issues if you're starting up during an upgrade, but that's a problem with anything dynamically linked.
      - iggldiggl 4y ago
        Doesn't using fork make it more difficult to cleanly separate the various child processes from each other? It also makes address space layout randomisation less effective, because every forked process starts out with the same base memory layout, doesn't it?
        toast0 4y ago
        > Doesn't using fork make it more difficult to cleanly separate the various child processes from each other? I don't think so? As long as the main process is separate from the seed process, and the seed process is forked before specialization. > It also makes address space layout randomisation less effective, because every forked process starts out with the same base memory layout, doesn't it? Yeah, I think you're right. Not sure if you could maybe do some randomization post fork, but you're probably right.

by reisse 4y ago

franga2000 4y ago

This is a consequence of most Linux package managers not caring if apps are running and updating their files anyways. Firefox does this because it would crash otherwise (as most other software does when you pull its files from underneath it). If it happens frequently, you must have automatic live updates enabled - maybe you don't on Fedora and that's why you don't see that happen? On Windows, where no standard update mechanism exists, Firefox updates itself, so it does it only when it knows it's fully shut down (before it opens or after you close all windows).

reisse 4y ago
No, Fedora package manager (dnf) does the sane thing and not replaces app files from under the running apps by default - google "dnf offline upgrades". And for Windows there is standard update mechanism - Microsoft Store - which also does the same sane thing. So it's Ubuntu implementation problem, and not a Firefox one.
- noisem4ker 4y ago
  >dnf offline upgrades Do I understand correctly that it is based on systemd's offline upgrade mode, i.e. installation is done at the following boot? If so, you can do that on Ubuntu too. I'm not sure how (perhaps by invoking apt-offline?), but at least KDE Discover does it on Kubuntu.
toast0 4y ago
> Firefox does this because it would crash otherwise (as most other software does when you pull its files from underneath it). Most software does fine, as long as it has already mapped in all of its libraries, those files can be unlinked in the filesystem, but will remain on disk in their current form. You do run into trouble if the software is part way through starting up and hasn't mapped all the libraries, or if you update the files rather than unlinking and copying new ones (at least, FreeBSD lets you update mmaped files and all processes will see the updates, which is usually not what you actually want when the files are code). Windows makes it very hard to update program files while programs are running, so it's not surprising Firefox endeavors to do updates while it's not running.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  Due to the way multi-process browsing works, Firefox at any time still needs to be able to launch new processes in order to accommodate new tabs, or thanks to site-isolation possibly even browsing to a different origin within the same tab. Once the old binaries have been unlinked, I assume there is no longer a sane way of launching a new process using the old binaries?
  - toast0 4y ago
    At start, you could start a new seed process, map all the libraries and what not, but don't do any browsing work... When it's time to launch an isolated process, fork the seed process and use the child. This doesn't seem insane to me, but might not be an easy thing to fit in to the large body of code that's already there. You still have issues if you're starting up during an upgrade, but that's a problem with anything dynamically linked.
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      Doesn't using fork make it more difficult to cleanly separate the various child processes from each other? It also makes address space layout randomisation less effective, because every forked process starts out with the same base memory layout, doesn't it?
      - toast0 4y ago
        > Doesn't using fork make it more difficult to cleanly separate the various child processes from each other? I don't think so? As long as the main process is separate from the seed process, and the seed process is forked before specialization. > It also makes address space layout randomisation less effective, because every forked process starts out with the same base memory layout, doesn't it? Yeah, I think you're right. Not sure if you could maybe do some randomization post fork, but you're probably right.