Firefox updates disabled by system admin.
SolvedHello, Firefox is not updating. Updates are disabled by the system administrator. In the package manager, once Firefox is selected, in the package tab, "hold version" is unchecked and "force version" is grayed out. The commands sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade yield nothing. In the sources.list, we can read this: ###firefox repositories configured
deb http://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-firefox-cn main
Of course, I can uninstall Firefox (stuck at version 116) and then reinstall it, but I would prefer to know how the system administrator can reactivate the updates.
Does anyone have any ideas??
Best regards.
Pilcana
11 réponses
Hello,
There are two possible explanations for your problem:
- Held packages: a held package is "frozen" and cannot be updated (due to a partial or global update or the installation of other packages). Generally, it's a very bad idea to hold a package, as it may lead to issues updating certain packages in the long term. You can check if any packages are held with:
apt-mark showhold
-
Priority: multiple repositories (defined in /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list) may provide the same package. In this case, APT must decide which one is most appropriate. To see how apt approaches this, you can use the apt-policy command.
Assuming the package is called firefox-esr, what does:
dpkg -l | grep firefox-esr apt policy firefox-esr
Because if one repository has a higher priority than another, regardless of version numbers, it will be the higher priority one that prevails. When priorities are equal, it's the most recent version that APT will select.
Example: Below, we can see two candidate versions of firefox-esr. Both have the same priority, and there is no offer with a higher priority. To choose between them, APT selects the one with the most recent version number (here 115.8.0esr-1~deb12u1).
(mando@cenedra) (~) $ apt policy firefox-esr firefox-esr: Installed: 115.8.0esr-1~deb12u1 Candidate: 115.8.0esr-1~deb12u1 Version table: *** 115.8.0esr-1~deb12u1 500 500 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 115.7.0esr-1~deb12u1 500 500 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 Packages
As a reminder:
- The repositories (defined by the distribution maintainers) are specified in /etc/apt/sources.list. You should never modify this file, unless you are changing versions or want to enable/disable repositories defined by the distribution maintainers.
- Other repositories should generally be defined (ideally by application) in a ".list" file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ (for example: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/toto.list).
- In the same principle, preferences (reflected in the results of apt policy) defined by the maintainers of your distribution are specified in /etc/apt/preferences. Generally, this file does not exist.
- Non-standard preferences should be defined in a dedicated file (ideally, by application) stored in /etc/apt/preferences.d.
So, it would also be interesting to see what returns
head -n 100 /etc/apt/preferences*
Good luck
Hello Steph 810 and Mamiemando, I have placed the following orders:
$ apt-mark hold firefox dpkg: error: required read/write access to the dpkg database directory /var/lib/dpkg E: The subprocess dpkg --set-selections returned an error code (2) E: Failed to execute dpkg. Do you have superuser rights?
$ sudo apt upgrade firefox Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done firefox is already the newest version (116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1). Calculating update... Done The following packages will be upgraded: google-chrome-stable 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. It is necessary to download 106 MB from the archives. After this operation, 4,096 B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
What do you think of the phrase "firefox is already the newest version (116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1)" when Firefox is around version 122 ??
sudo apt-cache policy firefox firefox: Installed: 116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1 Candidate: 116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1 Version table: *** 116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1 500 500 http://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-firefox-cn/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
$ sudo apt-mark showhold htop
$ dpkg -l | grep firefox ii firefox 116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1 amd64 The Firefox web browser ii firefox-l10n-xpi-fr 116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1 amd64 French language packs for Firefox ii q4os-firefox 4.3-3.2-a1 all q4os-firefox for Q4OS
head -n 100 /etc/apt/preferences* ==> /etc/apt/preferences.d <== head: read error in '/etc/apt/preferences.d': is a directory head: cannot open '/etc/apt/preferences.save' for reading: Permission denied
I am counting on your insights!!
Best regards.
Pilcana
I saw that just this morning.
In your repos, well it’s all Greek to firefox so:
Starting from image 3, check if you are on bookworm or still on bullseye?
Here’s a file /etc/apt/sources.list that I have, nice and clean:
To uninstall firefox:
sudo apt remove --purge firefox*
Then, download Mozilla Firefox by following the installation video here.
ps: I just reread, you are still on buster, so do not replace it like in image 3 unless you want to upgrade to the next version of Debian.
To upgrade change the word buster to bookworm or leave it as is.
Hello,
#8 Steph810, thank you for your answers, but a few recommendations to improve your future responses:
- I think screenshots are not practical for anyone and you should rather share a copy-paste in the future.
- The files you mention in /etc/apt/sources.list.d are not helpful. Firefox is in the official Debian repositories and therefore does not require the addition of new repositories, unless for a very specific need (but in any case, it was not mentioned in the initial message).
- This has also led your message in an unnecessarily complicated direction (see discussion on the different versions of Debian).
- Thank you also for paying attention to spelling.
#7 Picalna, thank you for your feedback. Remember to format the code snippets you share. I’ll go through each command entered, in order.
- This command requires administrative rights, so it needs to be preceded by sudo or run as root. Moreover, this command is counterproductive as it would freeze the current version of Firefox, and you want to do the opposite. In short, forget it :-)
- This command does not exist; it is just sudo apt upgrade. And in this case, it updates all packages that can be updated.
- We see that only one version of the firefox package is available. However, it is provided by a non-standard repository (q4os), which makes it suspicious. I believe your problem comes from there. You would just need to delete the file contained in /etc/apt/sources.list.d that mentions this repository. Assuming it is named as in #8, you would just need to run:
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/10_q4os.list
- We see that Firefox is not part of the frozen packages. However, htop is, and even if it has nothing to do with your problem, it would probably be advisable to unhold it and update it, otherwise it prevents the update of all packages that depend on htop.
sudo apt-mark unhold htop sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
- We see that two versions of Firefox seem to coexist (one provided by mozillabinaries, the other by q4os). What is certain is that only one of the two is launched when you start Firefox. Unless you have a very specific need, I don't see a good reason to use either of these two versions when firefox is provided in the standard repositories.
Now, let’s see how to properly solve the problem.
- If we look here, we see that the firefox package is only available under Debian sid (Debian unstable). So this package generally makes no sense.
- If we look here, we see that the firefox-esr package is available in all relatively recent Debian versions (especially buster). However, it is also noted in red "security," which means that the firefox-esr package will only appear if the security repository is explicitly activated in /etc/apt/sources.list. According to #4, this repository seems to be activated on your side, so you should be able to run:
sudo apt update sudo apt install firefox-esr
Moreover, whatever version of Debian is used, you will have Firefox 115 at the time of writing these lines. This aligns with what brucine said in #2.
-
According to #4, you are using Debian buster, whereas buster is the current oldoldstable version of Debian, in other words, it won't be supported for very long and you should consider migrating soon to a more recent version of Debian (by June 2024 at the latest, see here).
Now let’s move on to resolving the problem.
In any case
In any case, I would remove what is installed. These are non-standard repositories that will cause problems sooner or later and which, I think, should not be configured.
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources/list/10_q4os.list sudo apt purge firefox firefox-l10n-xpi-fr q4os-firefox sudo apt update
Next, a choice needs to be made, which will lead to two different complementary answers:
- Either you settle for Firefox 115 and maybe in some time, a more recent version will be released. You can then run the following command, and then the folder is sorted :-)
sudo apt install firefox-esr firefox-esr-l10n-fr
- Or you want a more recent Firefox (and I think that's what brought you here). Since an APT installation is always cleaner, that’s the one I'm going to describe (thus I will avoid the snap approach and the approach where you download an archive and decompress it carelessly). As mentioned above, the only option is the Debian sid package... and there you will say yes, but I’m on buster and even if I'm ready to migrate to a newer Debian, I don’t want to go all the way to unstable Debian. So how to proceed?
More recent Firefox
To install a Debian package that corresponds to a version higher than yours (which is the case here), there are two approaches.
- The naive approach: download the ".deb" from packages.debian and once downloaded, install it with dpkg. It’s simple, but it doesn’t always work because sometimes the package in question depends on other packages that are too recent to be available in your version of Debian. Personally, this is the approach I recommend to you, but I know that this is not the response you expect :-)
- The advanced approach: you double the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list and define in /etc/apt/preferences/sid.list (arbitrary name) preferences which tell APT, "take as much as possible from my Debian version, but if you have no choice, then take from the sid version". It’s (a bit) more complicated to set up, but it works every time. The other drawback is that since your Debian is (very) old, you might have packages that will stretch across versions!
Naive Approach
We get a download link (from an arbitrary mirror) on packages.debian for the package we are interested in:
sudo apt install wget wget http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_123.0-1_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i firefox_123.0-1_amd64.deb # In case of missing dependencies: sudo apt-get install -f
Here, after the last command, either everything works and we are happy, or it doesn’t work and we need to move to the advanced approach.
Advanced Approach
We begin by creating the file /etc/apt/preferences.d/sid.list (non-arbitrary):
sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences.d/sid.list &
Inside, we specify that sid should only be considered as a last resort:
Package: * Pin: release o=Debian,a=buster Pin-priority: 990 Package: * Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable Pin-priority: 90
We modify /etc/apt/sources.list with root rights to take the current repositories and their sid counterpart. Note that only the deb repositories are practically of interest to you. You can safely delete all lines starting with deb-src which are only useful to a minority of people. I also omit the lines starting with a # (which are comments for APT, and therefore have no impact). Assuming that the relevant lines in /etc/apt/sources.list are:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main non-free-firmware deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster-security main non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main non-free-firmware
It would become:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main non-free-firmware deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster-security main non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ sid main non-free-firmware deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security sid-security main non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ sid-updates main non-free-firmware
To correct this file you can use:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list &
Then we run:
sudo apt update
If some repositories do not exist in Sid, you just delete them from /etc/apt/sources.list, save, and re-run:
sudo apt update
Now, the firefox package becomes available. All packages available in both sid and buster are preferentially taken from buster (cf apt policy). As only Debian sid provides the firefox package, it will be the package installed. The dependencies that can be kept in buster will be, but all dependencies that need to be updated will be taken from sid. We will then run ...
sudo apt install firefox firefox-l10n-fr
... but be careful! Once this command is executed, APT will tell you what it is about to do. Do not confirm without reporting what it plans to do. However, as I mentioned, the gap between sid and buster is significant, so I would like to make sure that you are not going to break your entire system by running this command!
Good luck
Hello and sorry for my late reply. I "unfroze" htop with the commands you gave me:
sudo apt-mark unhold htop sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade.
No bad surprises!
However, I typed:
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/10_q4os.list
[sudo] password for philippe49fnum6demi: rm: cannot remove '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/10_q4os.list': No such file or directory. Following that, I typed sudo apt update and I got: Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates InRelease Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster InRelease Hit:3 http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster-updates InRelease Hit:5 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease Hit:4 https://q4os.org/qtderepo buster InRelease Receiving:6 https://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-chrome-cn InRelease [1,838 B] Receiving:7 https://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-firefox-cn InRelease [4,635 B] 6,473 o received in 3s (2,384 o/s) Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 2 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them. What do you think of "Receiving:7" ??
Best regards.
Pilcana
Hello Pilcana
In response to #10
I think there are still traces of q4os deposits, either in /etc/apt/sources.list or in one of the files contained in /etc/apt/sources.list.d.
To find out which one it is:
grep -nr q4os.org /etc/apt/sources.list*
Good luck
Hello Mamiemando. I typed the command :
grep -nr q4os.org /etc/apt/sources.list*
This gives :
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/50_q4os-chrome.list:2:deb [arch=amd64] http://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-chrome-cn main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/12_qtde.list:5:deb http://q4os.org/qtderepo buster main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/12_qtde.list:6:##deb-src http://q4os.org/qtderepo buster main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/50_q4os-firefox.list:2:deb http://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-firefox-cn main
In /etc/apt/sources.list.d, we find several files including 50_q4os-firefox.list. This last file contains this : ###firefox repositories configured
deb http://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-firefox-cn main
Should I delete this file ??
Best regards.
Pilcana
Hello Pilcana
In general, no repository in /etc/apt/sources.list.d is essential, since by definition, these are additional repositories that are not defined by the maintainers of your distribution.
For example, you mentioned this line
Get:7 https://q4os.org/qextrepo buster-firefox-cn InRelease [4,635 B] If you think you are not interested in the repository https://q4os.org/qextrepo (which apparently provided the package buster-firefox-cn), your grep command shows that it is in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/50_q4os-firefox.list that it is defined.
So, just open this file with root privileges and precede the offending line with #, or more drastically, delete said file (in any case, nothing will stop you from rewriting it if necessary, but in this case, I advise you to keep a copy). In short, if you want to delete it:
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/50_q4os-firefox.list sudo apt update
Note that the package buster-firefox-cn will not be uninstalled (however, due to the lack of a repository, you will not be able to reinstall it unless you reconfigure the repository). If you also want to remove buster-firefox-cn, you need to uninstall it explicitly:
sudo apt purge buster-firefox-cn
Good luck
Hello Mamiemando. Sorry for the delay, I applied the naive approach you suggested (message from March 11). This gives:
sudo apt install wget
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
wget is already the newest version (1.20.1-1.1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove, and 1 not upgraded.
wget http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb
--2024-03-29 12:47:19-- http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb
Resolving ftp.fr.debian.org (ftp.fr.debian.org)… 212.27.32.66, 2a01:e0c:1:1598::2
Connecting to ftp.fr.debian.org (ftp.fr.debian.org)|212.27.32.66|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, waiting for response… 200 OK
Size: 67158860 (64M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb’
firefox_124.0.1-1 100%[============>] 64.05M 1.07MB/s in 60s
2024-03-29 12:48:19 (1.07 MB/s) — ‘firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb’ saved [67158860/67158860]
sudo dpkg -i firefox_124.0-1_amd64.deb
dpkg: error: cannot access archive 'firefox_124.0-1_amd64.deb': No such file or directory
I wrote firefox 124.0-1 because I moved the corresponding package into the Home folder. As for the advanced approach, it gives this:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences.d/sid.list &
[1] 2018
philippe49fnum6demi@q4os-desktop:~$ sudo: gedit: command not found
Best regards.
Pilcana
Your dpkg command is incorrect (the path to the ".deb" file is incorrect) so nothing was installed. Based on what you reported, it should be:
sudo dpkg -i firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb
Regarding gedit, you can use this editor or another one (nano, kwrite, etc...), but it needs to be installed beforehand (which doesn't seem to be the case here). If you want to use gedit:
sudo apt update sudo apt install gedit
Good luck
Hello Mamiemando. Yesterday, I placed the order
sudo dpkg -i firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb The response is :
Preparing to unpack firefox_124.0.1-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking firefox (124.0.1-1) over (116.0.1~mozillabinaries-deb10u1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent the configuration of firefox:
firefox depends on libasound2t64 (>= 1.0.16); however:
The package libasound2t64 is not installed.
firefox depends on libatk1.0-0t64 (>= 1.12.4); however:
The package libatk1.0-0t64 is not installed.
firefox depends on libc6 (>= 2.36); however:
The version of libc6:amd64 on the system is 2.28-10+deb10u2.
firefox depends on libevent-2.1-7t64 (>= 2.1.8-stable); however:
The package libevent-2.1-7t64 is not installed.
firefox depends on libffi8 (>= 3.4); however:
The package libffi8 is not installed.
firefox depends on libgcc-s1 (>= 4.2); however:
The package libgcc-s1 is not installed.
firefox depends on libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0); however:
The package libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 is not installed.
firefox depends on libglib2.0-0t64 (>= 2.38.0); however:
The package libglib2.0-0t64 is not installed.
firefox depends on libgtk-3-0t64 (>= 3.13.7); however:
The package libgtk-3-0t64 is not installed.
firefox depends on libnspr4 (>= 2:4.32~); however:
The version of libnspr4:amd64 on the system is 2:4.20-1.
firefox depends on libnss3 (>= 2:3.98~); however:
The version of libnss3:amd64 on the system is 2:3.42.1-1+deb10u8.
firefox depends on libstdc++6 (>= 13.1); however:
The version of libstdc++6:amd64 on the system is 8.3.0-6.
firefox depends on libvpx8 (>= 1.12.0); however:
The package libvpx8 is not installed.
firefox depends on libx11-xcb1 (>= 2:1.8.7); however:
The version of libx11-xcb1:amd64 on the system is 2:1.6.7-1+deb10u4.
firefox depends on libxcomposite1 (>= 1:0.4.5); however:
The version of libxcomposite1:amd64 on the system is 1:0.4.4-2.
Then, Linux asked me to restart. As it was late, I turned off the machine. I turned it on this morning. I wanted to launch Firefox, unsuccessfully. In the taskbar, on the right, I saw that there was an update to be done. I initiated it. A little later, the Firefox icon disappeared from the desktop. In the "Synaptic" list, Firefox being uninstalled, I installed Firefox ESR. The operation went well. The issue is that the Firefox icon is not present on the desktop.
How can I get the Firefox icon to be on the desktop?
Best regards.
Pilcana
Hello Pilcana
Alright, we're getting straight into what I was explaining earlier:
- If we're optimistic, the dependencies of your current version might be enough:
sudo apt install -f
- Or you need to either add the sid sources (for example in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sid.list)
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ sid main non-free-firmware deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security sid-security main non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ sid-updates main non-free-firmware
and set up a preferences file (for example /etc/apt/preferences.d/sid.list, see #9) indicating that you only take Firefox as a last resort.Package: * Pin: release o=Debian,a=buster Pin-priority: 990 Package: * Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable Pin-priority: 90
- Or, you migrate to Debian sid (in which case, you just need to correct /etc/apt/sources.list), but I don’t necessarily encourage switching to Debian sid.
Good luck
Hello Mamiemando. After removing the "Firefox" packages from Synaptic, I wanted to install Firefox from the Q4os Software Centre. The installation stopped halfway because the q4os-firefox-esr package was missing. Fortunately, I've had Google Chrome for over a year. It updates regularly. As for Firefox, I’m throwing in the towel and declaring my problem solved, otherwise we'll still be at it by Christmas. Mamiemando, thank you for your help.
Best regards.
Pilcana
Okay, no problem.
- If you don't define a preferences file in APT (as I suggested in #17), you can always rely on having a more recent version of Firefox by waiting and/or upgrading your operating system.
- If you were using Firefox rather than Chrome for personal reasons, know that Chromium might interest you.
Best wishes
-
Windows spotlight is not working.
on 20 May -
Samsung j5 unable to answer
on 19 May -
Scam of the suvedene highway
on 18 May -
Remove 360 antivirus
on 18 May -
My pc's screen is flickering.
on 18 May -
Fujitsu siemens laptop won't start anymore
on 18 May -
Wearline: what do you think?
on 18 May -
Eko tank smartwatch
on 18 May -
Ibiza sound reviews
on 18 May -
Only one of my iphone headphones works. what to do?
on 18 May
Hello,
We might have a situation comparable to the one prevailing in Linux Mint, which incorporates its customized version of Firefox and consequently prohibits modifying it (but not in the case I mentioned of uninstalling it and installing whatever you want).
In the Debian case, it seems that Firefox is the ESR channel, whose updates are less frequent and which must indeed be at 115-116 (I have this not on Linux but on Windows 7).
See possibly here to install Firefox in the standard version.
https://www.numetopia.fr/comment-installer-la-version-standard-de-firefox-sur-debian/
In my case, I am very bad at Linux; I just opted to install Firefox through the graphical interface by skipping the terminal:
https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
Hello everyone, the command qrepolist returns :
What do you conclude ??
Best regards.
Pilcana
See Here