[wpkg-users] Firefox - Uninstall Check Failed Leaves Firefox in Unusable State - Inconsistent Behavior

[Rainer Meier]

Hi

Email Filterer wrote:
> I am currently using WPKG with great success to distribute a number of
> packages (wpkg client, adobe reader, thunderbird, etc.) across a small
> network of around 50 computers. There is however one small oddity that
> I cannot seem to rectify. For whatever reason the Firefox package
> intermittently detects that the software is installed (wpkg.xml on the
> local system), but the uninstall check (check type=uninstall) failed
> and then proceeds to reinstall Firefox. The final byproduct of this
> reinstall is a Firefox folder that has all of the files necessary to
> run firefox except the executable (firefox.exe). This problem is
> completely random. Some users can reboot dozens of times and never
> experience it in a repeated fashion. I was hoping someone might have
> run across this very same issue.

I think I had a similar issue with Thunderbird once where it was just
missing the thunderbird.exe files. As they seem to use the same
installer as Firefox it could be related.

I think I run into this problem only when Thunderbird was running during
upgrade. So using a batch-script which is using taskkill to kill any
firefox instances before upgrading should fix the problem. I think this
could happen only if WPKG is run while a user is logged in. When run at
startup (either with or without logon delay) by WPKG client this usually
does not happen because the user is usually unable to launch Firefox
before WPKG finishes its background upgrade job.

In addition you might insert a check for "%ProgramFiles%\Mozilla
Firefox\firefox.exe" existence. So the package checks will fail after
installation. After next reboot the user will for sure not be able to
launch Firefox (no binary) and then WPKG will succeed doing the silent
installation.

[snip log]

The log looks correct. So this seems to be an installer issue. Try
fixing it by making sure not Firefox is running while the upgrade is
launched and/or add some more detailed checks.


br,
Rainer