LO installer requires Firefox close or PC restart - why? how disable?

mikekaganski · February 11, 2019, 6:10pm

No. The messages must be on the safe side. Being so much afraid of closing applications or rebooting is not a normal case; installing a software might ask for such things from time to time. If sometimes it could happen to be safe not to, is just am exception. I disagree that for a user (especially novice), some messages that bring uncertainty (“may be in come times possible not to …”) is better than clear and robust guidance, even if sometimes it might happen to be avoidable.

The primary goal of installer is not to avoid user interactions and interruptions at all costs. The primary goal is to reliably install application, and leave system in a predictable and safe state. All other things are secondary. If possible, it could try to minimize interaction (yes, that’s good, but secondary!). And being not the primary function of the installed application, the possible inconvenience is much lower priority than possible problems when installer fails its primary goal.

Upstairs_Homework2 · February 14, 2019, 6:41pm

What you wrote earlier wrote

The old DLL would most probably be compatible with new LO - we rarely change its behavior. LibreOffice itself doesn’t need the DLL for its work… so the detection was right; but ignoring it is also OK.

doesn’t fit together with what you now write

If sometimes it could happen to be safe not to, is just am exception.

Anyway, I will stop talking about the wording in the popups now. Others who find it similarly confusing can now at least find this page and get an explanation for what is happening.

The more basic problem is that it is bad that the LO installer is designed in such a way that demands for closing browsers and/or rebooting happens at all. I hope LO in the future switches to an installer without those problems.

You earlier wrote that the component that causes the popups about Firefox could be disabled in the installer. How exactly? Can you please name the exact checkbox that should be unchecked?

mikekaganski · February 15, 2019, 2:54am

What you wrote earlier … doesn’t fit together with what you now write

Only if you ignore everything I wrote, and cite selectively.

You earlier wrote that the component that causes the popups about Firefox could be disabled in the installer. How exactly? Can you please name the exact checkbox that should be unchecked?

Well - when talking about Windows Explorer extension component (citing myself from the answer: “shell extension used for displaying ODF information in Explorer”), I’d not discard the possibility that something named “Windows Explorer Extension” has something to do with that

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Upstairs_Homework2 · February 15, 2019, 11:28pm

Only if you ignore everything I wrote

Sorry, but can you then please explain again? I really don’t understand how you think what you wrote fits together. If it is true that “old DLL would most probably be compatible with new LO - we rarely change its behavior” and “LibreOffice itself doesn’t need the DLL for its work” then how can it be “just an exception” that decling the “close Firefox”/“reboot PC” popups is safe? It sure sounds from what you wrote earlier that anything problematic happens only in exceptional cases.

“Windows Explorer Extension”

Ok, that is the component (named differently in my localization of the installer, but it is the only one that uses the term Explorer) that I was talking about earlier when I wrote

How exactly? I see only one item relating to Explorer in the custom installation options. Even if I disable that the installer still shows a popup about closing Firefox.

Again, disabling that does not prevent the popup about closing Firefox.

mikekaganski · February 16, 2019, 7:57am

Again, disabling that does not prevent the popup about closing Firefox

If the component was previously installed, it needs to be uninstalled regardless if you chose to update it, or to remove it.

mikekaganski · February 16, 2019, 8:16am

I really don’t understand how you think what you wrote fits together. If it is true that “old DLL would most probably be compatible with new LO - we rarely change its behavior” and “LibreOffice itself doesn’t need the DLL for its work” then how can it be “just an exception” that decling the “close Firefox”/“reboot PC” popups is safe? It sure sounds from what you wrote earlier that anything problematic happens only in exceptional cases

There are three possible cases:

There’s an external process holding a replaced resource, and the old resource is compatible with newer LO;
There’s an external process holding a replaced resource, and the old resource is incompatible with newer LO;
There’s an LO instance still running (e.g., user forgot to close it, or it is hung - it happens).

They are of different frequency; and also they are of different severity. And also - what’s important - installer does not know which happened at the time of execution.

mikekaganski · February 16, 2019, 8:22am

So the severity of #1 is "Oh I am so much afraid of closing my lovely browser/Explorer or rebooting - they must have done something terrible to make me SUFFER!!!1111’

Severity of #2 (admittedly rare) and #3 (quite common!) is crash. And that is what is not acceptable, not the “suffering” of case 1, no matter how often #1 is. In that sense, #1 is just an exception. Windows Installer gives no means to tell #1 from #3; and there is generally no way to tell #1 from #2 (it depends on if a future version made incompatible changes to the component - something previous version that actually uninstalls old component cannon know).

Upstairs_Homework2 · February 16, 2019, 10:02pm

Thanks for that more detailed explanation, now I understand better what you meant. The basic flaw here then seems to be the use of an installer that cannot separate the three cases 123 and react to them differently. I never said I was “afraid” of closing the browser, you seem to invent that phrase yourself. I’ve only said that it is a hassle. A hassle that installers for many other programs do not have.

If the component was previously installed, it needs to be uninstalled regardless if you chose to update it, or to remove it.

If I uninstall LibreOffice, reboot the PC multiple times, after that start the LibreOffice installer again and disable the Explorer component in the installer options then the popup about closing Firefox still appears. Are there some additional steps to do to avoid that popup?

mikekaganski · February 16, 2019, 11:28pm

The basic flaw here then seems to be the use of an installer that cannot separate the three cases 123 and react to them differently

Heh.

If I uninstall LibreOffice, reboot the PC multiple times, after that start the LibreOffice installer again and disable the Explorer component in the installer options then the popup about closing Firefox still appears

Well - that would be a very interesting thing actually. So you say that the warning is shown when LO is not installed? That’s interesting - and that actually means that the problem here is something different. Well - the only thing to do here is to spend some time and try to find out what it is - e.g., use SysInternals’ Process Explorer to list handles opened by, say, FF at the time when the warning is shown, and try to find one (vs redist?), closing which makes the warning disappear…

mikekaganski · February 17, 2019, 8:25am

I asked a question that could help to find the offending resource using a list of deferred actions scheduled to happen after the reboot.

Upstairs_Homework2 · February 17, 2019, 9:14am

So you say that the warning is shown when LO is not installed?

Yes, I first uninstall LibreOffice competely. Then reboot the PC multiple times. Then LibreOffice is installed again, with “Windows Explorer Extension” disabled in the installer GUI options. That still produces a “close Firefox”.

I have since creating this topic reproduced the above sequence multiple times on two separate PCs. Running Windows 10, Firefox 65.0.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.0.3.

As mentioned before the problem with the “close Firefox” popup has existed for many years for LO. I therefore suspect the cause is not limited to the most recent version. Though I haven’t tested disabling the “Windows Explorer Extension” in previous versions.

Upstairs_Homework2 · February 17, 2019, 9:16am

Here is a screenshot of the popup. The number of Firefox items in the popup list seem to vary with the number of open tabs in Firefox.

[Album] imgur.com

mikekaganski · February 17, 2019, 10:21am

Possibly the pending changes are listed under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations, as indicated in MoveFileEx documentation. If you have a reproducible scenario, then could you please: 1. uninstall LO and reboot; 2. Launch FF; 3. Start LO setup, make sure it emits the Shutdown FF message, and not shutdown it; 4. Complete installation and see that “Reboot required”; 5. Without the reboot, open regedit and dump everything under the mentioned registry key, copying that here so that we could see what was actually causing the warnings.

Upstairs_Homework2 · February 21, 2019, 12:11pm

Ok, I followed those steps. I will post the data from the registry key in two separate comments because of the maximum character limitation per comment.

Upstairs_Homework2 · February 21, 2019, 12:13pm

edit: The comment system couldn’t format the list with linebreaks correctly, I put it here instead

mikekaganski · March 4, 2019, 3:50am

Just now, I have this when upgrading 7-zip:

image description

It tells to close Explorer. Just saying re:“no other software does that”.

In your last data I don’t see anything related to LibreOffice files, so can only suggest that you might want to cleanup your MSI folders - possibly you simply have stalled data from previous installs?

Upstairs_Homework2 · July 30, 2019, 12:52pm

This flaw/bug still exists in LibreOffice_6.2.5_Win_x64.msi which is the most recent version as of today.

Sorry to hear that the 7-Zip installer has a flaw similar to this flaw still present in the LibreOffice installer.
I don’t think I wrote “no other software does that” though. I wrote that it is “nowadays unusual for installers in Windows to require closing other applications and/or rebooting”.

Upstairs_Homework2 · August 10, 2019, 7:32pm

This problem still exists in LibreOffice 6.3

mikekaganski · August 14, 2019, 7:51am

Just wanted to mention this here:

Visual Studio 2017 15.9 Release Notes | Microsoft Docs

The just-released update to flagship Microsoft development tool (Visual Studio) mentions this:

This fix may have an increased chance of requiring a reboot of the machine in order to install an updated VC++ Redistributable package

The requirement to reboot is normal in some circumstances. It isn’t universal among all installations of LibreOffice worldwide; and those cases where it consistently is, is possibly specific in some ways, like having some specific software, or configuration, or … - so unless people “suffering” from that try to debug that to make it reliably reproducible on developers’ systems, nothing will ever be done here.

Upstairs_Homework2 · January 31, 2020, 10:06am

This problem still exists in LibreOffice 6.4

Reply to Mike Kaganski: The fact that Visual Studio (a tool for software developers rather than the general public) may in some case require a reboot after installing an VC+++ Redistributable package update is very different from the issue tracked here. LibreOffice is installed by end users. Forcing them to close their web browser and possibly reboot is bad installer design. It is weird of you to try to make excuses for that by pointing to other software. Also, I haven’t claimed that anyone is “suffering”. It is unprofessional of you to repeatedly in this conversation twist my words like that. Can you please stop doing that?