menubar alert does not limit concurrent execution

[dgandhi]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Whereas:

1) the menubar update alert requires only a single click to launch.
2) the launch creates no outward sign of execution for up to 20sec.
3) running multiple copies of update-manager is both wasteful and useless.

I request:

That clicking on the menubar update alert should only ever launch one copy of update manager, and should block other executions initiated from the button while the current version is still running.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for your report.

affecting to update-notifier

Could you please provide the following information:
apt-cache policy update-notifier update-manager
lsb_release -rd

Thanks

[dgandhi (dgandhi)]

update-notifier:
  Installed: 0.70.9
  Candidate: 0.70.10
  Version table:
     0.70.10 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main Packages
 *** 0.70.9 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.70.7 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
update-manager:
  Installed: 1:0.87.30
  Candidate: 1:0.87.30
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.87.30 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.87.24 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
lsb-release:
  Installed: 3.2-4ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.2-4ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.2-4ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I can't reproduce this in gutsy and higher .

Could you provide a way to reliably reproduce this behavior ?
What window manager are you using ?

[dgandhi (dgandhi)]

I just did it, the basic conditions seem to be:

- lots of apps open taking up more than physical RAM requires swaping to allow update-manager to load (this is always true on my machine)
- hit the icon multiple times before update-manager can load

This suggests to me that a race condition is created where the notifier assumes that running the manager is atomic, but if the system has not managed to free the ram to create the job, notifier is happy to initiate another one, since no manager currently exists.

In some sense notifier "does" what I want, but not for those of us living beyond our means RAM wise.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

According to bug 258128 this has been fixed in newer version of update-notifier.
It would help if you could try to reproduce it with version 0.71.2 or higher of update-notifier. I'm marking this report as duplicate of bug 258128.
Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report.

Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.