Firefox snap not updating and no notification / warning in Lubuntu 24.04.02 LTS

Support and Help
1

Ubuntu Version:
Lubuntu 24.04.02 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
LXQt

Problem Description:

After a new install and full update cycle in update manager / apt get I was still on an old version of Firefox. Did some digging and realised there was a transition package that installed a Firefox snap - so started digging and saw that the snap would not update when Firefox was running, makes sense. What I do not understand is why I am not seeing any notification of this, when snap refreshes in the background it happily says no updates are needed and doesn’t fire any notifications, there was no way for me to know this without manually checking it and led to me using an outdated webbrowser for days, which has months worth of security issues.

I got it working but is this going to happen again at next upgrade and leave users not knowing they need to upgrade? Based on other complaints in main Ubuntu forums about constant popups warning about the need to exit to update the snap I am guessing this works in Gnome

Relevant System Information:
This is a default installs

Screenshots or Error Messages:

There are no errors or warnings

What I’ve Tried:

need to scroll code block down to see full text, I put my observations as comments

firefox shows as out of date after several days of use

scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap info firefox
name:      firefox
summary:   Mozilla Firefox web browser
publisher: Mozillaâś“
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/firefox
license:   unset
description: |
  Firefox is a powerful, extensible web browser with support for modern web application
  technologies.
commands:
  - firefox
  - firefox.geckodriver
snap-id:      3wdHCAVyZEmYsCMFDE9qt92UV8rC8Wdk
tracking:     latest/stable/ubuntu-24.04
refresh-date: 2024-08-27
channels:
  latest/stable:    135.0-2      2025-02-04 (5701) 270MB -
  latest/candidate: 135.0-2      2025-02-11 (5751) 270MB -
  latest/beta:      136.0b5-1    2025-02-12 (5761) 272MB -
  latest/edge:      137.0a1      2025-02-12 (5758) 302MB -
  esr/stable:       128.7.0esr-1 2025-02-04 (5695) 283MB -
  esr/candidate:    128.7.0esr-1 2025-01-31 (5695) 283MB -
  esr/beta:         ↑                                    
  esr/edge:         ↑                                    
installed:          129.0.2-1               (4793) 282MB -

it says at next refresh it will upgrade firefox

scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap refresh --list
Name     Version  Rev   Size   Publisher  Notes
firefox  135.0-2  5701  270MB  mozillaâś“   -

didn’t upgrade in the background so try manually and tells me all are up to date

scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap refresh
All snaps up to date.

double check it didn’t update silently - nope - still on old version

scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap refresh --list
Name     Version  Rev   Size   Publisher  Notes
firefox  135.0-2  5701  270MB  mozillaâś“   -
scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap info firefox
name:      firefox
summary:   Mozilla Firefox web browser
publisher: Mozillaâś“
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/firefox
license:   unset
description: |
  Firefox is a powerful, extensible web browser with support for modern web application
  technologies.
commands:
  - firefox
  - firefox.geckodriver
snap-id:      3wdHCAVyZEmYsCMFDE9qt92UV8rC8Wdk
tracking:     latest/stable/ubuntu-24.04
refresh-date: 2024-08-27
channels:
  latest/stable:    135.0-2      2025-02-04 (5701) 270MB -
  latest/candidate: 135.0-2      2025-02-11 (5751) 270MB -
  latest/beta:      136.0b5-1    2025-02-12 (5761) 272MB -
  latest/edge:      137.0a1      2025-02-12 (5758) 302MB -
  esr/stable:       128.7.0esr-1 2025-02-04 (5695) 283MB -
  esr/candidate:    128.7.0esr-1 2025-01-31 (5695) 283MB -
  esr/beta:         ↑                                    
  esr/edge:         ↑                                    
installed:          129.0.2-1               (4793) 282MB -

changes command confirms that no updates happened

scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap changes
ID   Status  Spawn               Ready               Summary
6    Done    today at 14:44 GMT  today at 14:44 GMT  Refresh all snaps: no updates
7    Done    today at 14:48 GMT  today at 14:48 GMT  Refresh all snaps: no updates
8    Done    today at 14:49 GMT  today at 14:49 GMT  Refresh all snaps: no updates

No notification that firefox needs to be closed and no sign updates are needed on the desktop

closed browser

run refresh again and it works as expected

scott@home-lap:~/.local/share/flatpak/db$ snap refresh
firefox 135.0-2 from Mozillaâś“ refreshed
2

Open the terminal and enter

sudo killall firefox

press enter

enter your password

then enter

sudo snap refresh

after everything completes then restart your computer.

1 Like
3

Brutal. I’d be inclined to just click the X button in the corner, myself.

I think the question is more why they don’t get a notification. In the GNOME desktop there is a notification, so I suspect there’s some integration missing, or not ported yet to Lubuntu.

4

Exactly, I should have been clearer , I have updated the original post, basically I managed to get it to update but is this a bug that there is no notification and will it keep happening at every update ?

I would like to think I am a fairly literate user, although not maybe with Snaps and I missed the need for an update for days.

2 Likes
5

Quite a few days I’d say … firefox typically refreshes at least roughly once a month in my experience…
(I’m with popey here, looks like some UI integration is missing… On default Ubuntu it looks like a Gtk dialog (might be flutter though) I wonder if it fails when the toolkit libs are missing or some such)

6

I always update using the terminal and therefore never use an update manger or wait for a notification there are updates.

1 Like
7

As a Lubuntu user, my memory is that the notification is there. Does anyone have a clue exactly how to trigger an update check? Is this a script that runs when the snap updates? Point me to the code?

8

You can’t click the X button in the corner if no browser is open and in use.

I believe the sudo killall firefox` is to close any services running in the background prior to updating Firefox Snap.

I may be wrong as I’m only a user.

If my posts are incorrect the please have a moderator remove them.

9

Huh? I mean if it’s frozen and unresponsive that’s true, but you can click the “close” button on any running application window.

Also, the idea isn’t incorrect, it’s just not optimal. It’s like pulling the plug on your computer versus shutting it down.

1 Like
10

Deleted

11

There is a thing called “snapd user session agent” that manages it:

2 Likes
12

That link didn’t go anywhere. Can you point me at the actual code? Or if what I’m thinking is true and you’re already familiar with it, can you see any reason why this wouldn’t integrate with Lubuntu?

13

I haven’t worked on snapd for several years (and my involvement pre-dates the notification integration) but the snapd code is here:

PS: I fixed the link in the post above too …

2 Likes
14

If I’m reading that right, it just uses D-Bus. The docs say “Other desktop environments [outside of GNOME] have equivalent functionality.” That tells me it should Just Work, right?

15

It should, if the userd thing is installed in /etc/xdg/autostart and nothing suppresses the notification (does lubuntu have a notification management tool like gnome ?)

16

We do have lxqt-notificationd. It’s possible to shutdown notifications, but the way it works, it’s based on the “title” of the notification dialog (the “app name” in notify-send parlance). I’m not sure if a distinctive, unique value is used for these notifications, but if it’s “Firefox” in this case, that could be a problem, because ignoring that ignores all notifications from Firefox.

To explore that, @scott43126, what do you get from grep blacklist ~/.config/lxqt/notifications.conf?

P.S. for anyone reading this, notifications within Firefox can be managed in Settings > Privacy & Security > Permissions > Notifications. You can also block all desktop notifications here, too. This is a much better approach than getting heavy handed and ignoring all notifications of any kind from Firefox in lxqt-notificationd.

3 Likes
17

I only installed a few days ago, but yeah, looks like the one straight from the install :slight_smile:

I see some snap related stuff there, whether its the right stuff or working is another question …

scott@home-lap:/etc/xdg/autostart$ ls | grep snap
snap-installation-monitor.desktop
snap-userd-autostart.desktop
18

in mine there is basically nothing - aware you didn’t ask me for it but since I was at the CLI already …

scott@home-lap:/etc/xdg/autostart$ cat ~/.config/lxqt/notifications.conf
[General]
__userfile__=true
19

also for info this is the full list from that dir, few gnome things in there too apparently

scott@home-lap:/etc/xdg/autostart$ ls -1
at-spi-dbus-bus.desktop
blueman.desktop
geoclue-demo-agent.desktop
gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop
gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop
gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop
lubuntu-update-autostart.desktop
lxqt-desktop.desktop
lxqt-globalkeyshortcuts.desktop
lxqt-notifications.desktop
lxqt-panel.desktop
lxqt-policykit-agent.desktop
lxqt-powermanagement.desktop
lxqt-qlipper-autostart.desktop
lxqt-runner.desktop
lxqt-xscreensaver-autostart.desktop
nm-applet.desktop
nm-tray-autostart.desktop
orca-autostart.desktop
org.kde.discover.notifier.desktop
picom.desktop
polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1.desktop
print-applet.desktop
snap-installation-monitor.desktop
snap-userd-autostart.desktop
spice-vdagent.desktop
xdg-user-dirs.desktop

I have got several notifications from the battery on the laptop when starting, weirdly telling me I have a battery pretty much, so I assume that one works, not much else though and that seemed to be in a combined notification tray icon I guess as it looked like a speech bubble - not seeing it right now or I would screenshot .

20

Yeah, the autostart stuff looks fine, it’s not that …