Silent Update OS Dialogs/TestPlan

Silent Update OS Dialog

Feature	Status	Release Target	Dev Lead	QA Lead	Status
Silent Update: Removal of OS security dialog for Windows	Landed on Nightly 12	Firefox 12	Brian Bondy	Simona Badau

Summary

• On Windows updates (when Firefox is installed into the default Program Files Directory) cannot currently be made without the User Account Control (UAC) dialog prompting for elevated permissions.
• The purpose of this subfeature is to make updates available and easy to perform whether they are made by an administrator or by a limited user account.
• Firefox updates will be executed through a service named Mozilla Maintenance that will prevent UAC prompts to be displayed.
• The service is installed via software update, in the installer there is also a checkbox for whether or not install the service.
• There will only be one Windows service for every product and every development channel.
• After the service is started it will watch a directory for the new files - named 'work items', and will generate 'logs' for the install/uninstall and update processes that will be logged separately.
  • The work items can be found in the "updates" folder that is located in:
    • C:\ProgramData\Mozilla\updates - on Windows Vista and Windows 7
    • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Mozilla\updates - on Windows 2003 and Windows XP
  • Logs can be found in the "logs" folder that is located in:
    • C:\ProgramData\Mozilla\logs - on Windows Vista and Windows 7
    • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Mozilla\logs - on Windows 2003 and Windows XP
  • The newest log will always be called maintenanceservice.log and 5 backup logs will be stored for the last 5 operations before the latest

(maintenanceservice-1.log, maintenanceservice-2.log, maintenanceservice-3.log, maintenanceservice-4.log and maintenanceservice-5.log).

• If a service is already installed, the service will be replaced on updates and installs only if it is newer than what is installed.
• If the user is running on an x64 computer with a native x64 build, then the service will not be installed nor used by that build.
• If the user is on an x64 computer with an x86 build, then the service will be used and installed by the build as an x86 process.

Reference

• Feature wiki page - Link
• Process Description wiki page - Link

Not Tested

• Other Silent Update sub-features.
• Non-silent updates.

Test Cases

• Test cases can be found in the Spreadsheet: Google Spreadsheet

Important bugs

• bug 481815 - Provide a Windows service to update applications without asking Administrator password
• bug 529746 - App update should request elevation when the user doesn't have privileges to update
• bug 692887 - Apply updates to an alternate directory while FF is running, then move when stopped