Discover does updates without permission

[James F.]

The icon indicating updates are available appears in the system tray. I click on it, and then, on the pop up, I click on the button to see updates.

Discover launches.

I look at the updates, and decide to run them later. Instead of clicking the "Update" button, I close Discover.

The updates are downloaded and installed anyway.

This happened several times with a previous version of Ubuntu.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: discover (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-48.51-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-48-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.6
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Wed May 8 08:57:34 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-11-20 (168 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: discover
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[James F. (marathon)]

Between when I wrote that and today, I was unable to duplicate the bug. There at least two updates after I reported the bug, and before today.

Because I have a slow, lousy Internet connection, when I see an update will be large, I want to postpone the update, and start it just before a time when I will be away from the computer.

This bug did happen again today. When I saw Discover wanted to update Firefox web browser, I closed it, without entering my password. At the time, Firefox was version 66.0.4. Without my permission, discover updated it to 66.0.5.

[James F. (marathon)]

This morning, I was notified there were some updates. When Discover opened, I let it sit -- I neither closed it, nor clicked the update button. I did click a couple of the "..." icons to see more information.

Discover initially showed the 10 (IIRC) updates, but didn't show a total size. After what seemed a couple of minutes, it showed the total size was about 7 MB. While I watched, it "reset" twice. By "reset", I mean the screen changed to "Looking for updates." After the 2nd time, it showed there were 5 updates, with a size of 1.9 MB.

[James F. (marathon)]

It happened again.

Between my previous post and today, there were updates where Discover behaved properly. Some updates included Chrome, some Firefox, and one had both. In no case did Discover update anything without receiving permission.

But, today, there were 15 updates, including a Firefox update. I decided to delay the updates. I left the computer. When I returned an hour-and-a-half later, there were 6 updates, and Firefox was not among them. Firefox version had changed from 67.0.3 to 67.0.4 (64-bit).

[James F. (marathon)]

It happened again today, but this time it was Thunderbird that was updated without permission. Thunderbird upgraded to version 60.7.2 (64 bit).

[James F. (marathon)]

Another oddity: This morning, there were 23 (IIRC) updates.

Maybe more than you wanted to know:

[[Expecting to be away for a little more than an hour, I started running the updates shortly before getting ready to leave. Just before I left, I checked the status of the updates. I had to restart them. This is probably the result of poor Internet service I have. Likely, the connection was lost during the updates. So, I entered the administrator password again to get the updates restarted. When I returned home, about an hour-and-a-half later, I had to restart the updates again.]]

Once restarted, it took about another hour for the updates to finish. I got a message notifying me that a system restart was required for the updates to take effect. Here is the odd part: I got that message about 3 minutes before the updates were done.

[James F. (marathon)]

This week, I had 9 small updates. I left the Discover update screen on top, and watched without interacting with it. While I watched, the number of updates decreased, one at a time. It went from 9 to 3. I let it sit for at 3 updates before I entered the password to allow the updates to run.

[James F. (marathon)]

Just now, I had 5 updates, which included both Firefox and Chromium. It updated both, without waiting for my authorization, and without any indication it was downloading anything. Again, it slowed my use of the Internet.

I'm going out in about 1/2 hour. Had I a choice, I would have started the updates before going out.

When the update was finished, each tab in Firefox was blanked out, and Firefox seemed frozen, except I was able to exit Firefox. I did exit and restart Firefox, using the "Restore Previous Session" feature.

[James F. (marathon)]

It happened again today. This time, it appears to be an OpenJDK update.

I was supposed to watch a live stream on YouTube this morning. I wasn't able to do that because this update was running. It is still running, 70 minutes after I booted my computer, and about 35 minutes after the live stream ended.

I HAVE LOW BANDWIDTH. I CANNOT AFFORD TO HAVE UPDATES RUN WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.

[James F. (marathon)]

Uh ... err ... I don't know what was running for that hour-and-a-half this morning. It wasn't OpenJDK update. The version hasn't changed.

[James F. (marathon)]

I now believe this is a known issue, although I do not have a reference. When there is an update, packagekitd may begin downloading the updates to save time. This saves time when the superuser authorizes updates be downloaded and installed. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well for users like me who have low bandwidth service.

I now suspend packagekitd when I need to use what little download capacity I have, and resume packagekitd later. I also suspend it when the size of the updates is large. I try to resume it and begin the updates when I will be away from the computer for an hour or more.

[James F. (marathon)]

I, for one, am no longer bothered by this. I have dropped the ISP I was using when I began having a problem with this behavior. With my new ISP, my connection speed is fast enough so that this would no longer be a problem.

Also, since first reporting this, I have also updated to (a) more recent version(s) of KUbuntu.

I don't know if others with slow connections are affected by this.

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

This bug is very old, if this is still an issue please update bug with info on a supported release.

[James F. (marathon)]

This is no longer an issue for me.