Firefox 3: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update options initially editable

I can confirm this. In my case, "Automatically check for updates" has Firefox disabled (i.e. it is shadowed that I can't check the box), in addition to what is reported above. I have no way of undoing or changing what has been selected in "When updates to firefox are found".

Firefox Installed: 3.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.3 on Ubuntu 8.04

Well, I can confirm it, but although everything is updated by synaptic. If I'm wrong please correct me, if I'm right then confirm that. I wouldn't call it a bug and even if, hmm..., well it's not really important IMHO.

Well it fails me to understand why put a setting you cannot set then...removing the radio buttons will be better since you cannot use them.

Not sure I understand what U need about Synaptic.

*** This is an automated response ***

Thank you for your bugreport. Since this seems to be an issue with
version 3 of the firefox browser, I'm reassigning the package. If you
feel this is an error, please don't hesitate to add a comment to your
report.

 affects ubuntu/firefox
 status invalid

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status confirmed

Hi clovepower, thanks for using Ubuntu and thanks for your bug report! However, this is expected behavior. All Ubuntu updates are routed through Ubuntu's own update manager, and for good reason. It isn't the job of Firefox developers to ensure their updates don't break in Ubuntu and in the case that they did and Firefox could update itself, our entire userbase would suffer this failure. Updates are pushed out by Ubuntu only after they have been tested, to ensure there is no breakage. This paradigm is overall a huge win for Ubuntu users IMO, and something important in the open-source world where developers aren't necessarily writing code just for a particular OS.

It might be nice to not have these options at all but that would require a non-trivial change to the Firefox package and require maintenance.

OK, I see the point.

What is confusing is that the settings are set in one way, you change them and it's no way to revert back...if it's difficult to remove them, isn't it possible to at least have them disabled by default?

> What is confusing is that the settings are set in one way, you change
> them and it's no way to revert back...if it's difficult to remove them,
> isn't it possible to at least have them disabled by default?

Can you clarify what can be changed and then later not changed back? I
am not aware of such an aspect. Can you change the Firefox update
setting at one point? Something like that could be considered a bug.

Yes, sorry if I was not clear.

The options are all ENABLED the first time I open the dialog (on a fresh install), until I click the "Ask Me what I want to do" radio button. AT THAT POINT they become disabled.

Hence I found it confusing since it seems you can choose an option only once in you lifetime and you have no chance of revert back your choice.

Shouldn't the status of this bug being changed form INVALID? I think accordingly to Mike Rooney email this is a legitimate bug since the update settings in Firefox ARE editable at one point.

Hi clovepower. Confirming your own bugs defeats the point of the system, and I don't see anyone else who has confirmed that the options were at one point editable and now are not. Others have confirmed that the update options are disabled but that is by design. I will mark back to New until someone else can confirm this behavior and update the title appropriately.

My mistake, I just wanted it not to be invalid, since in my understanding invalid means the bug report is not legit, I apologize if Ithis is not the case...

P.S. To be honest the guys above just wrote "confirmed" which MIGHT indicate they confirm the whole behavior ;-)

I just did a fresh install of Intrepid beta and noticed that Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Updates indeed had the Firefox option enabled. When I restarted my machine and check again that the option is disabled now. Is this the expected behaviour? Am sure that the option was enabled when I checked immediately after a fresh install, before any updates were run.

Thanks Parthan, I'll Confirm based on your input!

firefox 2 wont see such polishing fixes anymore. if you see this in firefox 3, please reopen.

@Alexander,

My last comment was for Firefox-3.0.3 in Intrepid and that's why Rooney confirmed it. Should I change the Invalid for firefox-3.0 to confirmed?

Confirming this bug (based on my previous comment) for Firefox-3.0.3 in Ubuntu Intrepid Beta.

Hello!
Is there any way to turn automatic updates on again?
I'm running Firefox 3.0.3 and I would like to have 3.0.4

I have found that since updating for restricted plug ins, when java was installed I can no longer type a message in hotmail, and I need Hotmail for school purposes.

In the meanwhile I used a win pc to forward everything to Gmail.

Thanks
Have a good weekend

You can manually change the setting to "Ask me what I want to do" even if disabled by going to about:config, put "app.update.auto" in the filter and then change the value to false.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090216 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.14

Hi, I 'm new here and everywhere else on ubuntu and linux. I also faced the same behavior under Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update, not only with "Ask Me what I want to do", but also when I unchecked the "Automatically check for updates to:" (the entry became inaccesible). Also under Help the "Check for updates..." is grey(inaccesible). Screenshot only for Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update, can't take screenshot when the Help dropdown menu appears.
Thank everyone helps.

I had that problem, I updated Firefox via Synaptic and with version 3.5 no more problems.

System--->Administration----->Synaptic package Manager.

enter Firefox and select 3.5.x (latest)

Also doing an upgrade to Karmic solves many issues that Jaunty had.

Just remember that once you upgrade to Karmic go to repositories and select the ones that where turned off during upgrade AND CHECK that each repository is targeted to KARMIC (if it reads Jaunty change it for Karmic)

Or you can do a back up of your entire data and DO A FRESH INSTALL, the easiest way of backing up your data is doing a copy of your entire "home" folder, also check your "usr" folder for any important info that you may need.

You can find a lot of tutorials on how to do this in the forums if you have doubts.

Hope this helps a bit.

Tetsuo.

> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:59:16 +0000
> From: <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Subject: [Bug 263566] Re: Firefox 3: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update options initially editable
>
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090216
> Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.14
>
> Hi, I 'm new here and everywhere else on ubuntu and linux. I also faced the same behavior under Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update, not only with "Ask Me what I want to do", but also when I unchecked the "Automatically check for updates to:" (the entry became inaccesible). Also under Help the "Check for updates..." is grey(inaccesible). Screenshot only for Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update, can't take screenshot when the Help dropdown menu appears.
> Thank everyone helps.
>
> ** Attachment added: "bug?.png"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/33588510/bug%3F.png
>
> --
> Firefox 3: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update options initially editable
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/263566
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “firefox” package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix
> Status in “firefox-3.0” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: mozilla-firefox
>
> If you go under Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update and choose "Ask Me what I want to do" the corresponding radio button group is disabled, so the setting cannot be changed, however initially it was possible to make a choice.
>
> Steps to reproduce:
>
> 1. Start Firefox
> 2. Click Edit > Preferences to bring up preferences dialog
> 3. Click Advanced > Update
> 4. Under "When updates to firefox are found" choose "Ask Me what I want to do"
> 5. The "When updates to firefox are found" becomes disabled (see included screenshot) and the setting cannot be changed back again
>
> I expect the radio buttons under "When updates to firefox are found" to remain active.
>
> The buttons remain inactive even after Firefox is restarted.
>
> This does not appear to be an upstream bug, since Firefox 3.0.1 does not have this issue under Windows.
>
> Firefox version:
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820 Firefox/3.0.1
>
> Firefox package version:
> 3.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.3
>
> Ubuntu version: Ubuntu 8.04.1 AMD64 Desktop
       ...

Tetsuo thank you very much.
I will do the update to firefox3.5, but the most useful information was about Karmic, perhaps I will upgrate.
You helped me a lot.
 Ovasilis

Tetsuo__Shima wrote:
>
> I had that problem, I updated Firefox via Synaptic and with version 3.5 no more problems.
>
> System--->Administration----->Synaptic package Manager.
>
> enter Firefox and select 3.5.x (latest)
>
> Also doing an upgrade to Karmic solves many issues that Jaunty had.
>
> Just remember that once you upgrade to Karmic go to repositories and
> select the ones that where turned off during upgrade AND CHECK that each
> repository is targeted to KARMIC (if it reads Jaunty change it for
> Karmic)
>
> Or you can do a back up of your entire data and DO A FRESH INSTALL, the
> easiest way of backing up your data is doing a copy of your entire
> "home" folder, also check your "usr" folder for any important info that
> you may need.
>
> You can find a lot of tutorials on how to do this in the forums if you
> have doubts.
>
> Hope this helps a bit.
>
> Tetsuo.
>
> > Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:59:16 +0000
> > From: <email address hidden>
> > To: <email address hidden>
> > Subject: [Bug 263566] Re: Firefox 3: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update options initially editable
> >
> > Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090216
> > Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.14
> >
> > Hi, I 'm new here and everywhere else on ubuntu and linux. I also faced the same behavior under Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update, not only with "Ask Me what I want to do", but also when I unchecked the "Automatically check for updates to:" (the entry became inaccesible). Also under Help the "Check for updates..." is grey(inaccesible). Screenshot only for Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update, can't take screenshot when the Help dropdown menu appears.
> > Thank everyone helps.
> >
> > ** Attachment added: "bug?.png"
> > http://launchpadlibrarian.net/33588510/bug%3F.png
> >
> > --
> > Firefox 3: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update options initially editable
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/263566
> > You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> > of the bug.
> >
> > Status in “firefox” package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix
> > Status in “firefox-3.0” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
> >
> > Bug description:
> > Binary package hint: mozilla-firefox
> >
> > If you go under Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Update and choose "Ask Me what I want to do" the corresponding radio button group is disabled, so the setting cannot be changed, however initially it was possible to make a choice.
> >
> > Steps to reproduce:
> >
> > 1. Start Firefox
> > 2. Click Edit > Preferences to bring up preferences dialog
> > 3. Click Advanced > Update
> > 4. Under "When updates to firefox are found" choose "Ask Me what I want to do"
> > 5. The "When updates to firefox are found" becomes disabled (see included screenshot) and the setting cannot be changed back again
> >
> > I expect the radio buttons under "When updates to firefox are found" to remain active.
> >
> > The buttons remain inactive even after Firefox is restarted.
> >
> > This does not appear to be an upstream bug, ...