Linux non-snap installation breaks itself, most likely on update

[NelsonAPenn]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the tracker for existing similar issues

Describe the Issue

This is a relatively new issue I have been having related to (I'm assuming) Postman updating itself with the non-snap installation. I will sometimes go to open postman and find that it seems to have had a problem mid-update.

Here is the output of an ls -l in the directory I installed postman before.

total 160160
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nelson nelson       306 Feb 17 18:20 log.txt
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nelson nelson        11 Feb  3 15:11 Postman -> app/Postman
drwxrwxr-x 7 nelson nelson      4096 Feb 18 09:15 Postman-1645110386321-old
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nelson nelson 163993744 Feb 17 10:06 Postman-1645110386321.tar.gz

The link Postman -> app/Postman is broken in this case, and the contents of log.txt are

2022/02/17 18:20:56:973 Postman-1645110386321 Swapping the old app with new one
2022/02/17 18:20:56:976 Postman-1645110386321 Swapping done
2022/02/17 18:20:56:984 Postman-1645110386321 Swapping the old app with new one
2022/02/17 18:20:56:986 Postman-1645110386321 Parent process is alive, killing it now

A couple more (maybe) relevant pieces of information: it is installed in a location that does not need root permissions. I have seen this issue exactly 3 times, so that may help point to an update that started the issue, updates worked fine before then. My install directory is called postman, not Postman, so app would appear in a directory called postman, not postman/Postman/app.

In each instance, replacing the contents of the directory with the contents of the archive fixes the issue.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Power up your system
2. Try to open your desktop file that points to Postman
3. Find that it has, at some point, replaced itself with a log, *-old directory and a tar.gz archive (see image and ls -l output).

Screenshots or Videos

Environment Information

- Operating System: Ubuntub 20.04
- Platform Type: Native App
- Postman Version:
(after fixing the issue the latest time)

Postman for Linux

Version 9.14.0

Architecture x64

Platform linux 5.13.0-28-generic

### Additional Context?

_No response_

[twitharshil]

Hey @NelsonAPenn

Thanks for reporting the issue! Apologies for the trouble caused from our end. It seems to be a genuine issue & a fix for this is implemented already & planned to be out soon with the next minor version release for the postman application.

This issue happens when an update is downloaded in the background & the user chooses to close the application. There are two ways to avoid this issue for the time being:

1. You can choose to click on the update download & restart now item from the settings icon dropdown once an update is downloaded to avoid this issue. This issue will go away once the application is moved to Postman v9.14.0

2. You can install postman using snap. Snap updates the postman application automatically whenever it is available.

---

Edit: The fix is now available in Postman v9.14.0+ onwards.