Linux permissions and Pale Moon updates [I'm stupid]

[Thad E G]

"A recommended security and stability update is available. but you do not have the system permissions required to install it ... ... ... or try again from an account that has permission to install software on this computer"

Pale Moon 33.4.0.1
Linux: Linux Mint 21

Well, fair enough, most software needs root permissions to install and update. I think the usual way of handling it is that the installer asks for the required permission. But how to handle this in a safe way? There's an obvious answer...

Code: Select all

$ sudo palemoon #running with root permissions
$ <run update from Help>
$ <quit palemoon>
$ palemoon #running as user.

...Is this safe and effective?

Call me paranoid (which doesn't mean that the rest of of the world isn't out to get us ) but I am terrified of accidentally compromising the security of Pale Moon by accidentally giving something root permission.

I know enough to be scared... but not enough to know if I should be scared!

[andy80]

I don't use Mint, so I don't know whether Pale Moon is available in its repositories (in such a case you can just update it as all other packages, maybe with a small delay between the announcement of the new version of Pale Moon and its availability in the Mint repositories).

If you want to be sure to have Pale Moon without involving root, you can just extract the archive with your user in your home directory and then add a symbolic link from ~/bin to the "palemoon" file in the extracted archive's content.

Alternatively, you can do as I do: when getting the announcement of a new version, I download manually the archive and then extract it (as root) in /opt after removing the previous version of Pale Moon. To simplify the execution of Pale Moon, I added a symbolic link "/usr/bin/palemoon -> /opt/palemoon/palemoon".

[Thad E G]

Thank you very much.

It looks like I'm being stupid here. It seemed like a really nice idea to be able to just update from within the application, so I stopped thinking about anything else.

I just download the .deb from http://mirrors.rit.edu/mxlinux/mx-packa ... /palemoon/ and installed it.

[Pentium4User]

Linux operating systems normally have a package manager that does updates.
There is a public repo for PM on Debian-based systems like yours:
https://kannegieser.net/palemoon/

If you want to use the tarball, I recommend not using the internal updater. Enable notification, but not installation.
Then download the tarball and extract it with sudo privileges to the destination.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

If you want to use the tarball, I recommend not using the internal updater. Enable notification, but not installation.

I do no understand why.
Note I've been for a long time skeptical about frequent and (semi)automatic updates, but it's now a few years I converted.
I always installed the tarball under my own account (not a repo, not as root), both on the work and home machines.
And I always had notificaion enabled without automatic update.
1) At work (OpenSuse) I could not use the internal updater, so I have a standard manual) procedure where I backup profile and latest version, then get the tarball and install it.
2) At home (Ubuntu, desktop) the internal updater works, so after receiving the notification I do a quick backup (two tar commands of the binaries and of my profile) then call the updater (Help-> Check for Updates-> OK
3) At home (Ubuntu, laptop) I just call the updater without any backup (it's a sort of scratch machine)
2-3 is much simpler than 1 and I never had a problem.

[Pentium4User]

You can use the internal updater if the place PM is located can be written by your user.
If that isn't writable, you can't replace the files because the UNIX permissions will deny it.

[Thad E G]

You can use the internal updater if the place PM is located can be written by your user.

This and andy80's suggestions are very feasible.

If not seen already on the forum, the update message can alert me to the existence of the new version, which I can then download as .deb and install. Which I should have realised immediately, as I'd done it before!

In principle, I also do not like automatic updates, but update notifications are fine.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

You can use the internal updater if the place PM is located can be written by your user.
If that isn't writable, you can't replace the files because the UNIX permissions will deny it.

Exactly. It might also be affected by the permissions of some symbolic link, parent directory or other system-dependent issue.
I have PM located under my user (always installed from tar, never by deb or repo) and the internal updater works nicely in Ubuntu (where the password required by sudo is my user password), while it doesn't in OpenSuse (where the password required by sudo is the root password).

[moonbat]

There are 2 ways to install PM on Linux - the official tarballs from the downloads page, or using the repositories created by stevepusser and kannegieser.
If you choose the former, then extract the tarball to your home directory and run Pale Moon from there. This build has a built in updater that can be configured to install automatically or just alert you when there's a new update. If you don't like automatic updates and want to be in control of installing them, this is the way to go.

If you use stevepusser's repository, it is built without the built in updater since your distro's package manager will handle automatic updates. Pale Moon gets installed to /usr/lib/palemoon, and will automatically be integrated with your system (showing up in the application menu, or as an option to handle HTML documents). All updates are system handled and there are no permission errors because the system updater handles it. Instructions to set it up are here.

If you use kannegieser's repository, the problem is that the built in updater isn't removed; so even though the system can handle it, the auto updater will still announce a new update and fail because of lack of permissions.

[Thad E G]

There are 2 ways to install PM on Linux - the official tarballs from the downloads page, or using the repositories created by stevepusser and kannegieser.

Thank you