Provide a more seamless way to upgrade Brave automatically on Linux

[jamesray1]

(updated post by @bsclifton)
Installing Brave should add the package sources to /etc/apt/sources.list.d (or similar, based on the OS/window manager). We can prompt the user with a yes/no, how Opera does:

Or we can just put the sources there ourselves, like Vivaldi does. After this is done, the packages will be managed by Synaptic (or similar) which means the user will be prompted with auto-updates

Original post

Searched for the title on Google and Github issues.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install the latest Brave release on Linux, e.g. Ubuntu 17.04, the distro I use.
2. Wait until the next release (beta releases seem to be every weekday).

Actual result:
Brave doesn't prompt to update to the latest release, like it does in Windows 10.

Brave Version

Brave: 0.19.24
rev: 3b3fba2
Muon: 4.4.25
libchromiumcontent: 61.0.3163.100
V8: 6.1.534.41
Node.js: 7.9.0
Update Channel: Beta
OS Platform: Linux
OS Release: 4.10.0-35-generic
OS Architecture: x64

Reproducible on current live release:
I don't know about after 0.19.24.

[luixxiul]

On Linux you need to download beta releases manually. sorry for inconvenience!

[jamesray1]

OK well can you program a way to get beta releases like in Windows via clicking an update button on a prompt in the browser, with a details link?

[jamesray1]

Add an enhancement label perhaps?

[bsclifton]

I believe this is a wontfix because of how Linux operates. You can setup your package manager to automatically update, but triggering apt / rpm from inside Brave is unreasonable, since that requires root privs

[bsclifton]

@jamesray1 what is the behavior like for Chrome and Firefox?

[jamesray1]

I'll look into setting up an automatic update with the package manager. I haven't noticed them update automatically as I haven't used them much.

[jamesray1]

The version on Ubuntu Software is 0.19.24, while the latest release is 0.19.70.

Is there something that I can add below?

[jamesray1]

Maybe:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

As per here.

[jamesray1]

While logged in as the root user I ran:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

However, brave was not one of the packages that was upgraded.

[jamesray1]

I just uninstalled Brave and snap removed it, then reinstalled it with snap install brave --beta. The same version was installed as before uninstalling it according to snap: brave (beta) v0.19.66dev from 'brave' installed.

But now I can't open brave, while I can find it in Activities (right clicking on it after finding it in activities and selecting "show details" shows "No application found". Then when I look in installed apps, Brave is in the list, but when I click on it and click launch, nothing happens.

So I removed it.

I then tried:

curl https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -

However it skipped prompting for the password.

[jamesray1]

So I logged in as a root user, and ran
curl https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -
which returned OK on the last line.

Then I ran:

echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging `lsb_release -sc` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-`lsb_release -sc`.list
deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging artful main

Which returned:
deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging artful main.

Then I ran:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install brave

That installed 0.19.20.

However, then Brave doesn't show up in Ubuntu Software, and I still haven't figured out how to automatically update to the latest version.

I could use the .deb file for the latest release but there must be a better way than having to keep manually installing the latest release. I ran:

wget -O brave.deb https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/dev/debian64
sudo gdebi brave.deb

However, the brave version listed within Brave is still 0.19.20.

I closed Brave and ran brave via bash, which opened Brave, however the Brave icon in the sidebar didn't indicate that a window was open:

The output was:

Error: unrecognized flag --icu_case_mapping
Try --help for options
ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.

GDebi lists the version as 0.19.70. Note that the Lintian output exited with status 1.

Interestingly, after I removed the package in GDebi, the version in Brave changed to 0.19.70!

While it's good that I now have the latest release, I think it won't automatically update, so I'll still need to find out a way to do that.

Brave is not found in the Software Centre or in the list of installed apps.

[jamesray1]

Whoops, I realised I used wget -O brave.deb https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/dev/debian64, rather than wget -O brave.deb https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/dev/ubuntu64!

I couldn't remove the package in GDebi; the program crashed. So I had to log in as a root user and remove each of the files/directories included.

I then installed and open 0.19.70 with wget -O brave.deb https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/dev/ubuntu64 then sudo dpkg -i brave.deb. However, it still didn't show in the Software Centre.

If you have any tips on how I can get Brave installed and updated to the latest release (beta or stable), that'd be appreciated.

One idea is to use a Chron job, however I haven't tried using Chron jobs before, it looked like a bit of a hassle.

[jamesray1]

I removed the package again with sudo dpkg -r brave.

Then ran snap install brave --beta, which installed 0.19.66. Before that, running snap install brave and snap install brave --stable both didn't work. However, 0.19.66 doesn't have an icon in the taskbar, so I snap removed it.

Then ran sudo apt install brave. Which installed 0.19.20. Here's hoping that it will automatically update to the current latest release, 0.19.70, soon.

[bsclifton]

@jamesray1 I think that is the problem- we haven't been maintaining the snap packages ☹️ I know that @posix4e and @bbondy are aware of them, but we aren't updating them as part of our release process (yet)

Regarding the 2nd issue, I believe the problem is that you're on the Beta channel for Linux... Likely the last few deployments folks did not update the beta channel. Hang tight and I'll push an update on there

[bsclifton]

@jamesray1 for reference:
Brave version - Ubuntu Snap #9870
Provide an AppImage for Linux #10250

[bsclifton]

and crap- @jamesray1 I believe the best course of action would be to use the release channel for the moment. We've forcibly pushed an update for Windows/macOS which flushed beta users over to the release channel. However, we didn't cover Linux users in that case (and I don't have a fix for you unfortunately)

@darkdh put in the work for true release channels which is captured in #10552 which we'll be merging soon. Once that is merged, we can do our first true "Beta" build. This uses a distinctly different profile than the one you've been using, which is the same as release channel. When this is pushed, you'll be able to install both concurrently

[jamesray1]

OK I'll try 'snap install brave --release' after uninstalling Brave tomorrow.

[darkdh]

I think we should do something like Opera or add it to the /etc/apt/sources.list.d silently (Vivaldi) when user install Brave through deb files

cc @bsclifton , @bbondy

[jamesray1]

snap install brave --release returned error: unknown flag `release'.

[bsclifton]

@jamesray1 I updated the original post with notes about the experience @darkdh found

Regarding snaps- I apologize... I don't know much about those. We aren't maintaining those ourselves (yet), so we don't have any control over what those do. I've never used that technology myself, I can only speak to installing via deb or rpm

[jamesray1]

Yeah I just read that, I think that looks like a good option.

[bsclifton]

snap install brave --release returned error: unknown flag `release'.

@jamesray1 Brave does not have true channels (yet). These will be added with #10552 ex: current behavior whether you install from beta or release, it uses the same profile folder. Once this PR is accepted, you'll have distinct folders for beta and release installs

With regards to installing the release one, you can follow the steps here:
https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/blob/master/docs/linuxInstall.md#debian-jessie-and-ubuntu-artful-zesty-yakkety-xenial-and-trusty-amd64

To get release binaries (when adding the source), you can run this:

curl https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt `lsb_release -sc` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-`lsb_release -sc`.list

To get beta binaries, you would instead run:

curl https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt-staging `lsb_release -sc` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-`lsb_release -sc`.list

With regards to snapcraft, after looking over the docs, it looks like it possibly supports beta also. I'm curious if you can run:

snap install brave

to get the release version and

snap install brave --beta

to get the beta version?

[jamesray1]

Also logging in as root with su - and entering the root password, then running apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y didn't update anything.

[jamesray1]

Yes I tried following those steps as described above. snap install brave didn't work. snap install brave --beta installed 0.19.66, but there was no Brave icon in the sidebar, so I uninstalled it.

[bsclifton]

Also logging in as root with su - and entering the root password, then running apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y didn't update anything.

@jamesray1 that is likely because the beta repo has not been updated. We are not going to touch it until the above PR is accepted, which will create a new Brave-beta profile (it will look like you lost all your data, but it'll just be stored in a new location).

For now, you'll want to remove that from /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ manually and then use the RELEASE source list:

curl https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt `lsb_release -sc` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-`lsb_release -sc`.list

This should properly add the 0.19.70 and you should be able to manually add it to Synaptic (if needed) so that you get auto-updates

[jamesray1]

OK, I've done that. I'll just remove Brave then reinstall.

[jamesray1]

OK so I ran those two lines. The last command returned:

tee: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-artful.list: No such file or directory
deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt artful main

[bsclifton]

hmm... not sure what went wrong..? @posix4e any ideas?

[posix4e]

There’s no artful distro pushes . Please choose one of the existing Debian or Ubuntu distro names. It’s the same Deb anyways

[jamesray1]

Yeah @posix4e I guessed that was the case. I'll try Zesty.

I'm not exactly sure how to run the command. I tried:
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt zesty main | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-zesty.list.

However, it gave me a > prompt.

[bsclifton]

@jamesray1 you're missing the ending " which should be right after the main (and before the redirection to sudo tee -a)

[bsclifton]

@posix4e weird- support for artful should have been added with #10756

[jamesray1]

Whoops, I should've seen that!

[jamesray1]

root@james-Streacom:~# echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt `zesty` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-zesty.list
tee: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-zesty.list: No such file or directory
zesty: command not found
deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt  main

[jamesray1]

Yakkety

root@james-Streacom:~# echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt `yakkety` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-yakkety.list
tee: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-yakkety.list: No such file or directory
yakkety: command not found
deb [arch=amd64] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/brave-apt  main

[jamesray1]

I was using Mozilla for a bit, but due to the ads I had to go back to using Brave with:
wget -O brave.deb https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/dev/ubuntu64
sudo dpkg -i brave.deb

As outlined other options are suboptimal or don't work.

I'm glad to be back!

[jamesray1]

After running snap install brave on a fresh install of Ubuntu 17.10 on a laptop, Brave didn't open when running in from Bash, from apps or via search. I used the alternative instructions here and the second Brave app ran fine.