Admin rights required?

chabis

Hello,

We are currently distributing the 64-bit Windows installer version of Zotero via a software distribution, as many users do not have administrator privileges. However, I have noticed that when users launch version 9.0.5, an 'updater' that requires admin rights starts up first. Clicking 'Cancel' here launches Zotero.
I thought it might be a bug, so I installed version 9.0.6, but the problem persists.
When did this start happening, and when can we expect a solution?

adamsmith

If you distribute Zotero in a way that doesn't allow users to update themselves, you should disable auto updates. You can find several threads on the forums with details.

This isn't new, though it might be that the way auto updates are performed has changed in Zotero 9 which is built on more recent Firefox builds.

gduffner

There must have been a change in Zotero 9.0.5 or how 9.0.6 is distributed because we get it centrally distributed by our IT without personal admin rights and the auto updates have worked for me as far as I can remember for Zotero 7 through Zotero 9.0.5. The update to 9.0.6 now is the first one where I see the admin prompt.

EDIT: I got the admin prompt before, too, but only when I tried to use the check for updates function.

chabis

Thank you very much. I didn't know that before.

One more question: As with Firefox, is it possible to configure certain settings centrally and lock them?

For example, we have a "local-settings.js" file that references a "mozilla.cfg" file. The Firefox update is disabled in the "mozilla.cfg" file.

Is this option available with Zotero?

dstillman

There shouldn't have been any recent changes here. The only potentially relevant change would've been going from Zotero 7 to Zotero 8, which updated the base platform from Firefox 115 to 140, and we're not aware of any changes there that would've affected this.

The standard Firefox mechanisms for disabling updates should work:

https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#disableappupdate

Creating a policies.json file in C:\Program Files\Zotero\distribution with DisableAppUpdate set to false seems to work for me. (It may still display a cached update once, but shouldn't after that.)

@gduffner: I'm not really sure what you mean. If your current OS user didn't have permissions to overwrite the app, auto-update couldn't have worked without elevation before either. If it did, then by definition you had access to overwrite the program files before.