ActiveState Community
Navigation
RSS Feeds
Automatic upgrades
Posted by Rob Carriere
on 2008-02-15 03:00
OS: Windows XP Pro
The machine I do most editing work on has Win XP Pro. My main account has restricted rights and is therefore unable to process updates correctly. Unfortunately, despite NT being on the market for 15+ years, many applications, including Komodo and Firefox, do not understand this basic fact.
So I have two questions:
- Komodo has downloaded the update to 4.2.1 under my restricted account, and keeps nagging me about it every time it starts up, despite the update having long since been installed through the administration account. What do I need to do to get rid of this annoyance?
- Would it be possible to modify the auto-update behavior? I have seen the FAQ on how to turn it off altogether (thank you), but would prefer to retain notification functionality. So in order of decreasing preference, I would like for Komodo to:
- Detect a restricted account prior to download and just notify of the update, not attempt it.
- Always ask permission to initiate an update download.
- Detect that the current app version number is >= the update version number, silently erase the downloaded update and stop the autonag.
It's quite possible that some or all of these are already possible, for example I see an app.update.mode in the about:config, but unfortunately I can't find any relevant documentation.
Can somebody help with either or both of these questions? Thank you.
Rob Carriere
- Login to post comments
Rob,
I've started http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=78510 to look into this. Komodo is mostly piggy-backing on Firefox's built-in auto-update system so tends to follow Firefox's behaviour closely here. Do you experience the same problems with Firefox (as you described for Komodo)? Or is Komodo behaving differently?
Regarding 'app.update.mode' I found this
(http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:Testing):
--------------
INTEGER - app.update.mode Default: 1
defines the policy by which background downloads are done, and the amount
of user prompting that is required:
0 - download all update types (major/minor) without user intervention,
regardless of incompatible extensions installed (they should just be
disabled after the update restart)
1 - download all update types (major/minor) only if there are no
incompatibilities with enabled extensions, prompt with UI otherwise.
2 - download minor updates only, prompt for major updates, regardless
of whether or not all enabled extensions are compatible.
--------------
However, currently all of Komodo's updates are "minor" (in the parlance of the auto-update system) so I'm not sure this setting will help your case.
Perhaps you could try setting "app.update.auto" to false to disallow subsequent automatic downloading of updates.
> Komodo has downloaded the update to 4.2.1 under my restricted account,
> and keeps nagging me about it every time it starts up, despite the update
> having long since been installed through the administration account. What
> do I need to do to get rid of this annoyance?
Ah, I think I know what is going on:
1. Komodo running under your restricted account notified of the 4.2.1 update.
2. Either Komodo automatically started the download of the update package (or you clicked "OK" when asked to do so -- perhaps accidentally if you were busy typing).
3. You shutdown Komodo, changed to your admin account, updated Komodo.
4. You returned to Komodo on your restricted account.
Komodo's auto-update system running as "Restricted-Rob" -- probably not your real username :) -- now thinks it has a pending update... because it has downloaded an update package to try. That information is stored in your Komodo user data dir... in a *very* deep dir something like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\ActiveState\KomodoIDE\4.2\host-HOSTNAME\XRE\ActiveState Komodo IDE 4.2\lib\mozilla\updates
If you poke around in there, is there an "updates.xml" and perhaps a ".mar" file? If you now move the "updates" directory out of the way:
move updates updates.outofway
and then re-start Komodo -- does it stop nagging now?
Thanks for picking this up.
To start with your last question: yes, those files are indeed still present, however, since I updated to 4.3 (and later 4.4) Komodo has stopped asking about 4.2.1. I assume this is because the newer versions keep their own status directories?
Your theory as to what I did could very well be right. The 4.2.1 landed at a time I was very busy (that's why I was slow with installing) and an annoyed click on the wrong button is an easy thing to do.
And yes, I get the same stuff from Firefox. That works slightly better, because I had found the directory/files to delete there, but had missed them for Komodo. (Please also read that as: thank you for supplying the path info. :-) )
Thanks for documentation on app.update.mode but, yes, you're quite right, that doesn't quite do what I'd like it to do. An application nagging me that there's an update out there that I haven't yet installed is fine. It's the application nagging me about an update that's already installed that gets old quickly.
Rob Carriere
> I assume this is because the newer versions keep their own status directories?
Yes, that's right.