Update manager is extremely problematic - had to cycle power to kill it

[BB]

I am using Ubuntu 8.04, and the update manager is the orange / grey coloured icon on the top right of the Gnome window.

The update manager is going totally out of control on my computer. It is swallowing the entire system resources, causing the disk to thrash, and rendering both the Gnome desktop and the consoles totally unresponsive.

I would have thought that something like an update manager would be set to run with a high "nice" level, but it seems to run at nice level zero, and it actually prevents me from using the computer.

Today I had to switch off the computer's power in order to kill the update manager - there was literally no other way to access the computer, since it was using so many system resources that I could not even log in via a console.

[BB (benkasminbullock)]

I should also mention that this update manager problem occurs before I even click on the icon - the update manager runs in the background, and slows the computer to an absolute halt at random periods in time.

[Gaurish Sharma (gslive)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description didn't include enough information. You may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" [WWW] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.

We have instructions on debugging some types of problems at [WWW] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures

Update Notifier does the update checking and displays a neat little icon in the systray. when its checking for updates, it downloads latest package information from Ubuntu's servers, so thats why you get grey icon on the top right of the Gnome window.

By default Update Notifier checks for new updates once in a day & checking updates takes about 2minutes on a internet connection with decent speed and does not consume much resources.
as you have claimed it takes lots of resources, whats your system config? , make sure you have atleast 256mb ram which is required to run Ubuntu.
if you meet minimum hardware requirements, try running update-manager by typing update-manager in Terminal (Application>Accessories>Terminal).
and when it runs Please monitor Memory usage & CPU usage(System>Administration>System Monitor>Processes tab).

And post the result here. as a temporary workaround, please disable automatic updates. here is procedure:-

1) System>Administration>Software sources
2) Navigate to Updates Tab and Uncheck "check for updates".
3) click close to exit.

Please remember by this your system may be left vulnerable, as latest security updates would not be installed. to install updates you manually have to check for new update & install them regularly. use update manager to check for new updates & install them.

alternatively you can use, which should be low on resource if you have a low end system.
:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Marking it as "Incomplete" as it needs more information, which i have requested above.

Please get back with required information and we would be happy to Help!

[BB (benkasminbullock)]

"Unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description didn't include enough information."

What information do you want?

[BB (benkasminbullock)]

"[WWW] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html."

By the way I read half of this and saw nothing but a bunch of boring blah. There's nothing which tells me what information you want. If you want some information from me, specify what information you want, don't point me at crap like this.

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

BB,

Sorry if you couldn't get what Gaurish was asking for. We want to ensure that update-manager is indeed consuming system resources. For this, you can first check off Automatic Updates option in System>Administration>Software sources>Updates Tab. Hence, update manager wont run at startup. Now open a terminal, run top/htop. Open another terminal and update-manager. Now watch the top/htop output to see how much does the update-manager utilize system resources. Hope that helps? Please feel free to ask if you have any problem :)

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

I meant "open another terminal and run `update-manager` command in it.

[Gaurish Sharma (gslive)]

sorry for trouble, Please provide the following information:-

1) Your system Config
2) output of top or htop, to check whether if Update-manger is really using resources.
open terminal and type the above command
3) steps to reproduce the same on our machines

Thanks

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!