I want to silently apply updates
I support 250 computers for the public in a county library system. What I am seeing is that in order to download the upgrade I have to go to Help | About. Then when it is downloaded I have to restart Firefox. Our patrons wouldn't know to do that, plus the computers are 'frozen' all day so when this patron restarts the computer, Firefox is back to the older version.
There is a window of time in the evening when the computers are thawed for windows updates, etc. I wish there was a way that I could force firefox to download the upgrade during that time and then restart to apply them.
Any ideas?
This is Windows 7 and I have chosen Automatically installed updates and Use a background service.
Thanks.
All Replies (8)
Tools (Alt-T) - Options - Advanced - Updates Select 'Automatically install updates'. Check 'Use a background service to install updates'.
Firefox will silently download the update in the background. The update will be applied upon a FF restart.
I said that I had chosen Automatically installed updates and Use a background service.
... in order to download the upgrade I have to go to Help | About.
Why would you have to do that? The idea of automatic updates is to avoid the manual download action. AFAIKT, it works that way. A FF restart is needed in any case in order to apply the update.
Modified by christ1
I don't know why I have to do that.
I just checked services and Mozilla Maintenance service is set to manual. I don't know why that would be. Any one know why I shouldn't just change it to Automatic and start it?
I found that the service is manual because it is only started when needed. But I still haven't figured out how to make this work for these computers
"I said that I had chosen Automatically installed updates and Use a background service."
As provided to end-users, Firefox has to be running for the automatic installation of updates, and a manual restart is needed for the actual installation of the update. If you are preventing updates from occurring during the day when those PC's are being used by your patrons and staff, Firefox would need to be launched at the end of the day or kept running after closing in order for the update to be installed; Firefox would still be needed to be closed; the installation of the update would happen the next time someone opens Firefox on the device - which would serve the same purpose as the manual "restart". But, I suspect doing it that way that is out of the question for your installation base.
This is not really the place to look for an answer to your dilemma, as this forum is an end-user support forum, and not geared to providing institutional support. We do have get occasional visits from institutional IT people with Firefox knowledge for mass or multiple installations, but it might be a long wait for a knowledgeable individual to stumble across this questions thread.
To that end, please less us know some particulars about how your organization has installed Firefox.
- Individual free-standing installations? Or roaming Profiles from a server?
- Type of installation package being used? MSI, "homespun", or the official Mozilla installer package?
- Are you using the CCK Wizard to customize the installation package?
http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cck2wizard/ http://cck2.freshdesk.com/support/discussions Mike Kaply blog - http://mike.kaply.com/
I installed Firefox from a download on their website and then deployed an image of the first computer to the others. I am not using any particular customization.
I am thinking maybe I could write a script that would start Firefox at the beginning of the maintenance period when they are thawed and then have the script close and then re-open firefox before they are frozen.