Firefox snap updates for non-technical users

[Oliver Grawert]

hi,
Am Mittwoch, dem 31.08.2022 um 22:16 +0100 schrieb Colin Law:
> On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 17:19, Ian Bruntlett <ian.bruntlett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I have a friend, R, who uses Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS, mainly for
> > Internet access via Firefox.
> > 
> > Firefox has always been problematic when it comes to Firefox
> > updates. However, closing all windows and running update-manager
> > (aka Software Updater) fixed that kind of problem.
> > 
> > However, after Firefox moved to being supplied as a snap, R has
> > been experiencing problems with Firefox. These are usually fixed by
> > me going to his house and running:
> > $snap list
> > $sudo snap refresh
> 
> According to this, snaps are supposed to auto-update.  Perhaps snapd
> is not running for some reason.  Perhaps it has been disabled for
> example.  https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date
> 

snaps have versioned home dirs (in ~/snap/<snapname>/, the "current"
symlink always points to the currently used dir) ... when a snap
package updates (which always happens immediately, there is no
"download first update later"), the confinement switches to the new
home dir (and copies all data first) and the snap loses all access to
the older one ...

if such an update happens to something like a browser and you have a
session open, only the session data up to the point where the update
happened can be stored by the app ... this is why you really *need* the
app stopped when the update happens ...

with 22.04 the "refresh app-awareness" feature [1] was added to snapd
to prevent this exact error by showing a notification to the user to
actually stop the app before performing any update ... snapd will not
update the app as long as it finds it running (it essentially behaves
like you did a "refresh.hold" as described on the above symlink) for
another 60 days (after this it will enforce the update even when the
app is running) ... 

sadly the UX for that feature is still quite horrible and not fully
done (the notification should offer a button to fire up the snap-store
or some such to actually do the update from there) ... luckily snaps
(including snapd, which also is a snap itself) are rolling release apps
, so the fixes will roll in over time, even for stable ubuntu releases.

for now, the user should stop the app and either update it manually
through the snap-store app's update button or via terminal through a
simple "sudo snap refresh" (no need to specify the package name btw,
snapd knows what can be updated) ...

ciao
	oli

[1] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/wip-refresh-app-awareness/10736
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