[tor-bugs] #11242 [Tor Launcher]: Continued false positives in Tor Browser up-to-date check

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#11242: Continued false positives in Tor Browser up-to-date check
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     Reporter:  anon          |      Owner:  brade
         Type:  defect        |     Status:  new
     Priority:  major         |  Milestone:
    Component:  Tor Launcher  |    Version:
   Resolution:                |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                |  Parent ID:
       Points:                |
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Comment (by mcs):

 Replying to [comment:5 arma]:
 > Yes, but then what? Does it write anything to disk? Or does it set some
 internal state in memory, and on the next launch it is stateless and will
 eventually fetch the tbbversions file again and notice again that it's out
 of date?

 It toggles a local Boolean preference (extensions.torbutton.updateNeeded)
 based on the outcome of the remote check.  That is done so Torbutton does
 not oscillate between reporting "out of date" and "up-to-date".  To make
 things even worse, the problem is that the remote check is not repeated
 until 1.5 hours after the last check was done.

 In the past, it is my understanding that "in place upgrades" were not
 really supported.  But they work OK now, and even if someone just copies
 their prefs.js file over from old-TBB to new-TBB they will experience this
 bug.

 The idea of marking the data with the version number of the thing that
 created it is a good one.  A simple solution would be for Torbutton to
 store the current TBB version in a preference and invalidate (reset) other
 preferences such as extensions.torbutton.updateNeeded when it notices that
 the TBB version of the installed package has changed.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11242#comment:6>
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