The help page for 'automatic upgrades' does not tell one how to re-enable them

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

What happened

I saw this:

So I clicked the help button in order to see why how to re-enable automatic upgrades. The resulting webpage did not disclose that information. Surely it should do.

(It took me a while to locate - or, given that I had disabled the setting myself, some time ago - re-locate the information. In order to help others, let me note the procedure here. Syncthing GUI -> Actions -> Advanced Configuration ->Auto upgrade interval (hours) -> set to something other than zero. And there does turn out to be a relevant help page.)

What I expected to happen

I expected to see a help page that discloses how to enable and disable automatic updates.

Version Information

Syncthing Version: 1.23.7

The OS of the computer at issue

Windows 10 Pro - 22H2 (2009: 19045)

[calmh]

I started answering this since there seems to be a misunderstanding, but then saw it is in the Android tracker, then saw it's apparently on Windows, and by someone called LinuxOnTheDesktop and my confusion just increased.

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

My moniker is somewhat unfortunate since in addition to Linux I use Windows (and Android).

Also (or however): I did misfile this on the Android tracker; I meant to put it on the Windows tracker. Shall I close this issue and open one on the Windows bugtracker?

[tomasz1986]

I think this essentially belongs to the Docs. There is none now but there should be an explanation added that automatic upgrades are usually disabled when using 3rd party channels (e.g. Linux distributions' repositories) or wrappers (e.g. the Android app).

(It took me a while to locate - or, given that I had disabled the setting myself, some time ago - re-locate the information. In order to help others, let me note the procedure here. Syncthing GUI -> Actions -> Advanced Configuration ->Auto upgrade interval (hours) -> set to something other than zero. And there does turn out to be a relevant help page.)

This is usually not the main culprit unless you've really disabled the updates yourself by tweaking the advanced configuration. Are you seeing this in the Web GUI of Syncthing that's running on Windows or is this Syncthing on Android? If it's the latter, then automatic upgrades are disabled indeed because it gets only upgraded when you update the Android app. The same applies to Linux if Syncthing has been installed using a repository (instead of just running the binary directly) where it only gets upgraded through that repository.

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

Are you seeing this in the Web GUI of Syncthing that's running on Windows or is this Syncthing on Android? If it's the latter, then automatic upgrades are disabled indeed because it gets only upgraded when you update the Android app.

The former - the web GUI, on Windows.

I think this essentially belongs to the Docs. There is none now but there should be an explanation added that automatic upgrades are usually disabled when using 3rd party channels (e.g. Linux distributions' repositories) or wrappers (e.g. the Android app).

I am afraid that I struggle to understand that. Perhaps I should restate my point. Here I go. In the web GUI, at least on Windows, Syncthing can grey-out the automatic updates option. Next to that greyed-out option is a 'help' button. I think that the webpage that the button launches should tell the user how to enable (and disable) automatic updates (or, when the platform precludes automatic updates, the webpage should tell the user the reason - or at least the possible reasons).

Surely a 'help' button next to a greyed-out setting - in this case that setting being one to do with automatic upgrades - should

[calmh]

Since this was about Windows, the message in your screenshot is not caused by any setting you can affect in the GUI, be that the upgrade interval or something else. It's cause by either setting the env var STNOUPGRADE or compiling Syncthing without support for upgrades. This should probably be mentioned at the link it leads to, somewhere, but since getting into this situation involves doing some magic (or having the mentioned administrator/maintainer do it), they would usually know how to get out of it as well.

The help link is always there and generally attempts to be the help for the dropdown that is there when nobody has hard-disabled upgrades. :)

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

I fear that I have disabled the auto-update via some method that you have mentioned. I think that here we do see the case for having a single and readily accessible set of relevant instructions. (I remember disabling automatic updates but I cannot remember how I did so.)

I did not compile Syncthing. Rather I installed it via syncthing-windows-amd64-v1.23.7.zip.

Also:

C:\Windows\System32>echo %STNOUPGRADE%
%STNOUPGRADE%

A yet further way of disabling upgrades, I believe, is by starting Syncthing with a particular switch. Yet, I start Syncthing with Start "Syncthing" /B "C:\Portable_apps\syncthing\syncthing.exe" "-no-browser" "-no-console".

[tomasz1986]

At the moment I would suggest to move the discussion to the forum (https://forum.syncthing.net) if you want to further troubleshoot the problem and find out why exactly upgrades are disabled. This issue here is now in the Docs repository and to "solve" it would be to add a user-friendly explanatory note about what possible causes of the message in the GUI may be.

You can just create a new topic on the forum and copy and paste your last message from here into it. You can put a link to this issue there too, for more context.