Too many / too frequent updates

[bencfreeman]

I've seen several posts regarding this. It's not a difficult concept. Please stop putting out updates every few days. I actually went through the trouble of putting a rule in our firewall to block that file download because every freaking time I open filezilla on one of our many (~100) servers, it ALWAYS updates. It's freaking annoying man. I don't have time nor do I believe I should have to disable auto update on every filezilla that we use. I would recommend adding a monthly or even quarterly update option. Weekly is way too much, and daily just doesn't make any sense at all.

[botg]

We don't have weekly or daily updates.

Do you by chance have multiple versions installed, only ever updating one copy over and over again, only to then start some outdated copy again?

[bencfreeman]

Hi, thanks for the response. I don't think multiple installations is our issue. I'm the one that has installed the Filezilla client on our machines and I've always taken the default install path. I assumed that you did daily and weekly updates because those are the only options available in the Updates settings. What happens is I don't use the Filezilla client on every machine often enough. Some machines get used rarely, but there is a cluster of machines at several of our locations that we use at least weekly. I may have exaggerated on how often the updates occur, but honestly it feels like it's at least once a week. Seems like every time I remote into a server and start the Filezilla client I'll almost have my address/user/password typed in and it will bring up the update window on top of everything. It's just annoying and we have way too many servers to sit down and go through each one disabling auto update. Would it be possible to include a checkbox to disable auto updates on the screen that pops up automatically when Filezilla is started? Or add a monthly option to the never/daily/weekly options in settings?

[botg]

It sounds like your organization needs a centrally managed software distribution infrastructure.


There are no no plans to add a monthly option to the checking frequency. I'm considering to even remove the weekly setting for security reasons. If a security fix would get released just moments after the last update check, 7 days is a long time in which attackers might exploit already fixed vulnerabilities.

[boco]

@botg: Maybe you should remove "Never", too. Anyone needing to disable update check can do so through the fzdefaults.xml file, for which (s)he takes full responsibility. The only sane reason for disabling update checks is if you have an alternative distribution method, anyway.

That being said, you should add a way to defer an update for a few days, in case a regression breaks something and a fix is underway.

[bencfreeman]

I agree, we could benefit from using a centrally managed software. I've tried a few solutions such as DropBox, but it has become such a resource hog and has become so bloated and slow that it is no longer useful. I can do more with a command line and batch files. But I digress.

Could I edit fzdefaults.xml to disable auto-updates? I know it's probably more work to build a script to replace fzdefaults.xml with a non-auto-update version than it would be to click through the GUI and disable it that way, but if this is possible I can roll this out with a simple startup script and my life will be much better.

I must apologize for the tone of my original post. I could have approached it differently. I've been on a particularly difficult job for 3 weeks now where I'm doing a great deal of backup and restore and looking through remote files. It's one of those jobs where nothing seems to go right and I was frustrated. FileZilla is far and above the best FTP client I've ever used, and I thank you for making it freely available.

What do you think about adding an option to check for updates on a certain day of the month? I would embrace that option. If I knew what day it would fall on I'd be much more willing to let the update go through because I'll know it's been about a month and that makes more sense to me. Our environment is very well secured, therefore I'm not super worried about being up to date to the minute with everything. I know that new security vulnerabilities are discovered every day, and I understand your desire to publish these patches ASAP. However, my preference would still be to have a bit more control over the update frequency. Just my two cents.

[boco]

Could I edit fzdefaults.xml to disable auto-updates?

Of course. It's a simple switch. An example template of an fzdefaults.xml file is in the docs subdirectory inside FileZilla's installation directory.

However, please note that disabling updates that way will have a side effect - all controls in the GUI and settings are removed, as well. In other words, you cannot check for updates anymore, even manually.

I know it's probably more work to build a script to replace fzdefaults.xml with a non-auto-update version than it would be to click through the GUI and disable it that way, but if this is possible I can roll this out with a simple startup script and my life will be much better.

With the same script, you could also run the latest FileZilla Installer in an automated manner, from a central location.

[bencfreeman]

With the same script, you could also run the latest FileZilla Installer in an automated manner, from a central location.

Very interesting. I never thought of running it that way. Will definitely be looking into that option. Thanks for the idea!