Firefox Upgrade to 3.6.4 Testing

Call For Testing

Call For Testing: Hardy Firefox users

We need Hardy users to test our latest Firefox Upgrade!

*Background:*
Firefox 3.0 and xulrunner 1.9 are now unsupported by Mozilla. Rather than backporting security fixes to these now, we are moving to a support model where we will be introducing major new upstream versions in stable releases. The reason for this is the support periods from Mozilla are gradually becoming shorter, and it will be more and more difficult for us to maintain our current support model in the future (see [1] for information).

We are going to release Firefox 3.6.4 as a minor update to the 3.6. This will be rolled out to Lucid, Hardy and Jaunty (along with xulrunner 1.9.2.4). The update for Lucid is quite trivial, but the update in Hardy and Jaunty is not quite as simple.

Before releasing these updates to the public, we need testing in Firefox, the extensions in the archive and distributions upgrades after those updates. We have published all these packages in a PPA [2] and we will track test results before moving anything to the archive.

We need people running *Hardy* (Jaunty and Lucid will see a similar call for testing in the following days) in bare metal or a virtual machine. If you are willing to help, you can follow the instructions below:

 1. Add the Mozilla Security PPA to your software sources

 You need to manually edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and add the following lines:

 deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa/ubuntu hardy main 
 deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

 After saving the file, you have to run:

 sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 7EBC211F
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get upgrade

 2. You have to have an account in our tracking system. Go to http://mozilla.qa.ubuntu.com and click on "Log In" and "Create New Account"

 3. To know what to test and how to report back, please, read our instructions in our testing wiki:

   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Firefox3.6.4Upgrade

Thanks!
Ara.


[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Lucid/FirefoxNewSupportModel
[2] https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-security/+archive/ppa

Testing Instructions

This is a very important upgrade in a stable release. There are significant risks that we need to cover. Basically we want people to perform the same activities that the do daily, without issues.

In order to make testing easier, this is a checklist of things worth looking:

1. The upgrade to Firefox 3.0.6 goes smoothly.
2. The extensions get upgraded as well.
3. All the Firefox plugins (i.e. Flash, Java) still work.
4. The extensions work correctly.
5. Full distributions upgrades are not broken.

To report your findings, you can use the tracker provided in the instructions above:

http://mozilla.qa.ubuntu.com

Once you have selected the Hardy image, you will see a set of "testcases", with a summary of how many reports have been sent. Obviously, the most important one is "Firefox".

Once you open one of the testcases, you will be able to report back your findings and bug numbers if something went wrong. Even if everything went fine, it is always good to report back the success ("Pass") with a comment on the activities you performed.

Use the "Firefox" testcase for general testing (upgrade, rendering, plugins, etc.) and the rest of the testcases if you want to report something more specific (Upgrades to Lucid, specific extensions errors, etc.)

To report bugs, follow the instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs.

Footnotes: