Suggestion - Auto-update mechanism

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ggbce
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Suggestion - Auto-update mechanism

Unread post by ggbce » 2022-10-30, 15:21

Hi,

First, I love the concept of Basilisk Web Browser. I understand your workbook is loaded of new features, bugs to fix, etc.

But, I think something is totally missing in this product and it's the major reason the people not adherate to use it. Managing manually product updates in enterprise envionment is not useful, hard to follow, need administrators privileges, ...

Then, if you could include a sub-routine to automatically update the web browser himself like we could find on all majors competitors could be a very benific advantage !

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Moonchild
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Re: Suggestion - Auto-update mechanism

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-10-30, 15:31

Automatic updates are easy to set up (see preferences -> advanced -> update), however you do need administrative privileges if Pale Moon was installed in a protected folder (this is by design in the OS). Enterprise environments specifically should not compromise their security (e.g. by having software installed in unprotected folders like AppData) so to update software installed in protected folders you must perform the update with administrative privileges.
We explicitly do not use an "automatic update service"/"maintenance service" because that, by its very nature of crossing the non-privileged to privileged execution boundary, compromises system security. Mozilla has had numerous exploits on that as a result when they moved to using it and to this day it remains very fragile. Google doesn't care at all about enterprise security as Chrome simply gets installed in unprotected locations that are easily hacked by malware.

Of course there are alternatives for software update available where software installations and updates are managed at the system level (package managers) but those solutions obviously fall outside of our scope.
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Re: Suggestion - Auto-update mechanism

Unread post by Basilisk-Dev » 2022-10-30, 16:48

I'm not sure if your question is for Pale Moon or Basilisk, in your post you mention Basilisk but you posted in a Pale Moon specific section of the forum.

There are third party solutions to deploy applications that do not offer .msi installer files via GPO/Active Directory. A company I used to work for did this to deploy some software we had that did not offer .msi installers, but I was not involved in that process so I cannot offer more help than that. I know they were able to deploy updates to this software as well, so in theory it may be possible.

Everything Moonchild stated above applies to Basilisk as well.
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