Linux: How to turn off auto updates in 75.0.3770

[Mark Co-Dyre]

Hello all,

I have an issue where auto updates are attempting to run in Linux Chromium version 75.0.3770.

Does anyone know how to turn OFF automatic updates in Chromium for Linux.  I was under the impression that it didn't attempt to do this on Linux.

https://www.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-updates

I've attached a screenshot of what I was seeing.

Regards,

Mark

[Jakob Kummerow]

Indeed, Chromium does not do auto-updates on any platform. Your package manager probably does; or at least it should. If you downloaded or compiled Chromium manually, you'll also have to update it manually.

AFAIK the message in the screenshot you posted is not the auto-updater failing to run. Instead, it's Chromium detecting that it is very old, and it assumes that the only reason why it would be so old is because updating has apparently failed. Updating it (by whatever means) should silence the message.

To be clear: version 75 is outdated and unsupported, and just like any old version may well contain known security bugs (known to Chromium developers, and also known to the bad guys out there) that will not get fixed in 75.x (that's what "outdated and unsupported" means). It is strongly recommended that you update to the current version (currently: 77). Do not use an outdated browser to browse the web, or you risk getting hacked.

If your distro doesn't provide a newer Chromium package, or if you (rightly!) think that updating it manually every so often is too much effort, then this would be a good opportunity to switch to a proper browser based on the Chromium sources: Google Chrome or Opera or Vivaldi or... etc. (Just make sure it's up to date; some derivative browsers use very old versions of the source.)

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[Jukka Marin]

On Monday, October 7, 2019 at 3:17:29 PM UTC+3, Jakob Kummerow wrote:

Indeed, Chromium does not do auto-updates on any platform. Your package manager probably does; or at least it should. If you downloaded or compiled Chromium manually, you'll also have to update it manually.

AFAIK the message in the screenshot you posted is not the auto-updater failing to run. Instead, it's Chromium detecting that it is very old, and it assumes that the only reason why it would be so old is because updating has apparently failed. Updating it (by whatever means) should silence the message.

We are using Chromium on small linux machines in kiosk mode for an UI which is used by random customers

(regular people) and see the same message which confuses the customers.  They can't update Chromium,

either, because they don't have the privileges to do it - and it's not what they should be doing in the first place.

Chromium accesses only our own UI, no external web sites, so while I agree that you should always keep your

software up to date, I feel it isn't such a problem in this case.

We also need to keep our FLASH card in read only mode to keep FLASH from wearing out, so we have disabled

all linux updates.  (We don't want changes to the FLASH, anyway, because these devices are all around in multiple

countries and a corrupted FLASH card is a very expensive FLASH card.)

Having Chromium pop up errors like this is a HUGE problem.

So, how can we disable this?

Thanks!

  -jm

[Jukka Marin]

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 3:27:55 PM UTC+3, Mark Co-Dyre wrote:

Hello all,

I have an issue where auto updates are attempting to run in Linux Chromium version 75.0.3770.

Does anyone know how to turn OFF automatic updates in Chromium for Linux.  I was under the impression that it didn't attempt to do this on Linux.

Have you found any solution to this?

Thanks,

  -jm

[Art Botterell]

I should like to bump this again.  It seems to make chromium a bit of a non-starter for many kiosk applications, which is a shame.

Art

[sy17 devel]

Any workaround for that?