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

[Email Filterer]

Hello All,

I knew there was a bit of information I forgot to include. I forgot to
mention that wpkg is being invoked at user logon only by way of a
logon script enforced using Active Directory in my domain environment.

To Jacob Wyatt:

The individual users themselves cannot issue any updates of any kind
with installed software given the above; I apologize for leaving this
important bit of information out of my original email. To be sure we
tested it out using a regular user account on a workstation with
version 3.0.4 installed. The "Check for Updates" option within Firefox
is grayed out for everyone other than the domain admins.

To Rainer Meier:

As it turns out I initially used wpkg to push Thunderbird to the
workstations but for whatever reason when organizing the profiles.xml
file I removed the Thunderbird package from the default profile the
normal users share so the Thunderbird installer shouldn't be a factor
here. This bit of information couldn't have been known since I
neglected to include an excerpt of the profiles.xml file; again my
apologies to all. Currently we have pushed the wpkg client v1.3.6 to
all workstations on the network along with a settings file. On the
Logon Settings tab we have it set for "At System Startup" for
Execution Mode and 2min logon delay. The client is set to stop the
service once all actions are completed. If there's something within
the client settings file that could potentially be causing this let me
know and I will have a look.

The logical operator test you mentioned in addition to the uninstall
check thats already present in the packages.xml file sounds like it
might work well for me. I suppose it couldn't hurt to toss in a task
kill command for firefox into the packages.xml excerpt I pasted
originally as well. Thanks again for the suggestions and assistance
its much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Chris

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Rainer Meier <r.meier at wpkg.org> wrote:
> 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
>