[Bug] BD Installer hangs after "Downloading asar file"

[CorneliusCornbread]

Before Reporting

• I found no existing issues matching my bug
• My issue is not caused by a plugin or theme

Describe the Bug

Using the BetterDiscord app image on Fedora 39 it seems that every attempt at installing BetterDiscord leads to an installer hang. Running the app image through the terminal does not give any notable output, it just simply hangs. Sometimes it complains that it failed to download the package from the official website giving a 502 error, sometimes it just hangs while downloading the asar file.

Usual output before hanging

Downloading asar file
❌ Failed to download package from the official website
❌ Status code did not indicate success: 502
Falling back to GitHub...

Expected Behavior

Better discord installer works

Steps To Reproduce

1. Download app image
2. Run app image
3. Go through install process
4. See hang on install

Operating System

Linux

Discord Version

Stable

BetterDiscord Version

v1.3.0

Anything else?

Installer window is still responsive, it just stops doing anything.

[GH0STP4WZ]

I will open up a fedora VM momentarily to see if I can replicate the issue.
Where did you get your Discord package from?

[CorneliusCornbread]

I will open up a fedora VM momentarily to see if I can replicate the issue. Where did you get your Discord package from?

I get it from the RPM fusion repos.

[Huderon]

I don't know nothing about nothing, but adding any kind of delay before the fallback request seemed to fix it for me. Was only able to reproduce on Fedora though so maybe that's just bunk?

[Vulpovile]

Same thing happens here but
Downloading asar file
❌ Failed to download package from the official website
❌ Status code did not indicate success: 403
Falling back to GitHub...

[zerebos]

Did the fallback to github not work in your case?

[999smokes]

same issue for me on windows and the fallback to github doesnt work

[Inve1951]

same issue for me on windows and the fallback to github doesnt work

#368 is unrelated

[GH0STP4WZ]

I will open up a fedora VM momentarily to see if I can replicate the issue. Where did you get your Discord package from?

I get it from the RPM fusion repos.

I completely forgot to update the status on my testing for this issue. My Sincerest apologies. With the package mentioned installed, I was not able to replicate this issue. Perhaps I did not install the correct version of Fedora. My knowledge of what they produce is rather limited. However, From my knowledge of the installation process, it shouldn't be too hard to manually install BD either way.

You can try manually compiling the Asar or downloading it from the BetterDiscord repo. then you want to modify your discord installation and simply require the downloaded Asar file in the desktop_discord_core index.js

This wont fix your installer issue, but it will get BD running on your system.

[APT37]

Downloading asar file
❌ Failed to download package from the official website
❌ Client network socket disconnected before secure TLS connection was established
Falling back to GitHub...
❌ Failed to download package from https://api.github.com/repos/BetterDiscord/BetterDiscord/releases/assets/232165797
❌ Client network socket disconnected before secure TLS connection was established

All files are accessible in the browser, it's definitely a problem with the installer.

[GH0STP4WZ]

Have you tried downloading a new copy of the installer?

[CorneliusCornbread]

Have you tried downloading a new copy of the installer?

Yes, here are the hashes of the file, tell me if the hashes are incorrect as it may point to a compromised distribution server.

MD5: b041285c2f31c98983d2e28b8828db82
SHA1: b8f3cb95afaa1de53b8f1dcbd70b0210b47145da
SHA256: 227e49e935a826c14e0c3c0c5ddd65320df7e35219243d8e25e6d5b60212c4fd
SHA512: 0dd5a366832d5fba63552601a2c6b40e9ced35381002069876ae119ad85b4ee50fb990b55ec12756f91aa30fd3456825d1125a31294c09c039d991125a9c3cb5

Funnily enough this was working again for the longest time for me but recently something changed.

[APT37]

The installer seems to have a problem with the redirect to GitHub. Changing the download URL to the redirect location and allowing status codes up to 302 fixed it for me.

That said, I don't know much about JavaScript and therefore won't commit a pull request, as this change could cause unexpected behavior I'm not aware of.

Broken

try {
    const response = await downloadFile("https://betterdiscord.app/Download/betterdiscord.asar")
    const bdVersion = response.headers["x-bd-version"];
    if (200 <= response.statusCode && response.statusCode < 300) {
        log(`✅ Downloaded BetterDiscord version ${bdVersion} from the official website`);
        return response.body;
    }
    throw new Error(`Status code did not indicate success: ${response.statusCode}`);
}

Working

try {
    const response = await downloadFile(
      "https://github.com/BetterDiscord/BetterDiscord/releases/latest/download/betterdiscord.asar"
    );
    if (200 <= response.statusCode && response.statusCode <= 302) {
        log(`✅ Downloaded BetterDiscord from GitHub`);
        return response.body;
    }
    throw new Error(`Status code did not indicate success: ${response.statusCode}`);
}

[CorneliusCornbread]

The installer seems to have a problem with the redirect to GitHub. Changing the download URL to the redirect location and allowing status codes up to 302 fixed it for me.

That said, I don't know much about JavaScript and therefore won't commit a pull request, as this change could cause unexpected behavior I'm not aware of.

Broken:

try {
    const response = await downloadFile("https://betterdiscord.app/Download/betterdiscord.asar")
    const bdVersion = response.headers["x-bd-version"];
    if (200 <= response.statusCode && response.statusCode < 300) {
        log(`✅ Downloaded BetterDiscord version ${bdVersion} from the official website`);
        return response.body;
    }
    throw new Error(`Status code did not indicate success: ${response.statusCode}`);
}

Working:

try {
    const response = await downloadFile(
      "https://github.com/BetterDiscord/BetterDiscord/releases/latest/download/betterdiscord.asar"
    );
    if (200 <= response.statusCode && response.statusCode <= 302) {
        log(`✅ Downloaded BetterDiscord from GitHub`);
        return response.body;
    }
    throw new Error(`Status code did not indicate success: ${response.statusCode}`);
}

Just tried this on my Fedora 41 machine, this didn't seem to change anything and resulted in the same issue.