update-manager closes without doing anything when I click 'Install Now'

[Steve Langasek]

Starting sometime in the past half week, whenever I try to install updates with update-manager, it immediately closes, exiting 0. If this is a widespread bug, then it's critical since this will prevent users from knowing how to apply updates to their systems.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: update-manager 1:0.170
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-11.11-generic 3.5.2
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.5.1-0ubuntu4
Aptdaemon:

Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Sep 3 17:07:21 2012
GsettingsChanges:
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'first-run' b'false'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'launch-time' b'1346717210'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'show-details' b'true'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'window-height' b'846'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'window-width' b'905'
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: update-manager
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-06-11 (84 days ago)

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This may be a false alarm. An strace of update-manager shows this:

recvmsg(12, {msg_name(0)=NULL, msg_iov(1)=[{"l\3\1\1N\0\0\0o\0\0\0`\0\0\0\6\1s\0\7\0\0\0:1.1873\0\4\1s\0&\0\0\0org.freedesktop.PolicyKit.Error.Failed\0\0\5\1u\0:\0\0\0\10\1g\0\1s\0\0\7\1s\0\7\0\0\0:1.1872\0I\0\0\0('system-bus-name', {'name': ':1.1873'}): org.debian.apt.upgrade-packages\0\0\0\25\0\0\0status-authenticating\0\0\0(\0\0\0\6\1s\0\7\0\0\0:1.1873\0\5\1u\0009\0\0\0\7\1s\0\7\0\0\0"..., 2048}], msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 190

And console-kit-daemon crashed on me in the same time frame. So it's possible that this is a permissions problem, nothing more. However, update-manager should do something more reasonable than closing with no feedback in the event of a permissions error.

[Edward Donovan (edward.donovan)]

Hi Steve, for one small sample -- I've updated a buncha times in the last few days, and haven't hit this. Thanks.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Yeah, let's blame this on consolekit.

update-manager should still say something useful in this case.