Ubuntu

How does Firefox Update Itself

Asked by tomdean

I do not want anything running on my system that does an automatic update. Firefox updates itself.
I currently have firefox 57, as of Nov 15. I did not upgrade firefox, it seems to have some setting to do that. Google seems to indicate that the ability to disable auto updates has been removed.

> ls -l /usr/bin/firefox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Nov 15 03:50 /usr/bin/firefox -> ../lib/firefox/firefox.sh
> ls -l /usr/lib/firefox/firefox*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 186560 Nov 15 03:53 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2667 Nov 15 01:50 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox.sh

This seems to indicate that in order to update firefox requires root permissions.
To me, this is a big problem. I normally do a backup before doing a dist-upgrade.
My previous dist-upgrade was on Nov 4. Firefox is dated later.

Question: How is firefox being updated?

Tom Dean

> uname -a
Linux Meerkat 4.13.9-041309-generic #201710211231 SMP Sat Oct 21 16:32:44 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

> cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="16.04.3 LTS (Xenial Xerus)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS"
VERSION_ID="16.04"
HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
VERSION_CODENAME=xenial
UBUNTU_CODENAME=xenial

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Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Firefox updates itself using the packages from the Ubuntu repository. If you apt-pin the browser it will never update.

Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#2

How did you install firefox - by using the Ubuntu package management programs, or by downloading it from another source (e.g. the Mozilla web pages)?

What is the output of the command
apt-cache policy firefox

There was a new version provided in the Ubuntu repositories on Nov 16 to correct some vulnerabilities, see https://usn.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-3477-1/

Do you have automatic installation of security updates activated?
see e.g. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates

What is the output of
ls -l /var/log/unattended-upgrades/
cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

Revision history for this message
tomdean (tomdean) said : 		#3

unattended-upgrades is the method of firefox's upgrade. I noticed a major change in appearance.