Beat The Annoying Firefox Download Error -228

While I was away from this site I was forced to use another computer that kept getting a particular error whenever Firefox (version 3.x in this case) attempted to download updates for the installed add-ons.  The browser correctly identified when an update was available but when it attempted to install the update the following error was returned:

Download Error -228

I scoured Google for a solution and nothing seemed to work.  There are plenty of users with this issue but not many solutions and no options to follow if the proposed solutions don't work.

The official solutions from Mozilla, none of which worked for me, are:

• Reload the page.
• Manually download the file (right click)
• Or you are downloading from a broken mirror site or the file is not on the server.

I tried these steps and none worked for me.  At the time I didn't have access to another computer so downloading the files elsewhere and transfering them wasn't an option.  So what to do!  Luckily, I quite by accident, stumbled across a ftp mirror of the Mozilla Add-ons website and downloading the files worked a treat from here.  I'll document below how I updated the Firefox add-ons step-by-step.

Updating Firefox Add-ons When You Receive the Error -228 Message

To get your Firefox add-ons to update when you receive the Error -228 message, and none of Mozilla's solutions work, you need to source the add-on file (a .xpi file) from a different source.  Most add-ons aren't hosted on the author's own website, especially popular add-ons that would be downloaded many times per day.  Luckily Mozilla mirror their add-ons site on a ftp server and it is a fairly simple process of updating your add-ons from there and below I'll show you how to do it.

For this brief tutorial I'll walk through updating the popular Firefox add-on "NoScript".

To begin with you need to determine the file number of your to be updated add-on.  To do this head over to the Firefox Add-ons page and perform a search for you add-on.  The URI for the "NoScript" add-on is https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/722.

The next step is to get the file number of the add-on.  This is simply the number in the URI.  You may want to keep a text file of your add-on file numbers so you can skip these step whenever you need to perform an update..  The URI for the "NoScript" add-on, as mentioned above, is https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/722.  The "722" section of the URI is what we're after.  All add-on URIs from this site are in the same format.

We then head over to http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/ and search for our add-on file number.  The easiest way of doing this is to hit "ctrl & f" and enter in your add-on's file number.  You can also simply add the add-on's file number to the end of the above URI so for the "NoScript" add-on you would get http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/722/.

You will be presented with a list of all the versions of the add-on with the most recent being at the bottom (there are dates listed along with version numbers for all of the files if you get confused).  You can now simply click on the required file and Firefox will update the add-on for you or you can right click the file and save it to your computer and install it that way.

No more will you have to put up with that annoying Error -228 from Firefox!