Updates are delayed because 'Waiting for other tasks' but no other task is running

[Christoph Korn]

Binary package hint: update-manager

I just wanted to make an update using update-manager but it does not start.

It only shows the message 'Waiting for other tasks'.

A few minutes later there was a message:
Task cannot be monitored or controlled:
It seems that the daemon died.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 10 17:30:59 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/update-manager
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.6
Package: update-manager 1:0.126
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-13.43-generic
SourcePackage: update-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-13-generic x86_64
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2134): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:2205): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (gnome-panel:2189): Gtk-WARNING **: gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -5 and height 24
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2264): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

What is the output of "ps afx" when this happens? Could you please attach it to the bugreport?

[MedO (smaxein)]

This was interesting.
I just had this problem and collected the output from ps afx to report here. In addition to the processes shown in the attached file, things like dpkg and defoma-app were popping up with high CPU load when I looked at top, and the general system load was very high (firefox had constant microfreezes and the menus reacted slowly), all while update-manager was still showing "waiting for other tasks".

Then the X server disappeared. When gdm came up again, its design was shot (everything was too large) and told me that the gnome power saving applet isn't installed correctly. Then everything froze completely.

I power cycled now, and the problem with gdm and the gnome power manager applet still exist. Not sure that it's all related to the problem in this report but the system never behaved like that until now. I'll gather some additional logs.

My system is an Eee PC 901, and I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 (last update was 1-2 days ago) from an SDHC card. Installed memory is 2GiB.

[MedO (smaxein)]

syslog seems to suggest that the x crash really was related to the update-manager problem, I attached the messages from a few minutes before the crash up to the last message before the next boot.

In particular, this message appears at the same time the X server disappeared:
AptDaemon.Worker: CRITICAL: Killing child since timeout of 600 s

[MedO (smaxein)]

update-manager had apparently been downloading and installing the updates (in some worker thread that shouldn't have done that I guess), since I could find all the updated packages in /var/cache/apt/archives and there were a lot of half-configured packages.

[WeatherGod (ben-v-root)]

MedO, sorry for such a long delay in getting back to your issue. Is this crash reproducible? Is it possible to collect a apport crash report on it?

[MedO (smaxein)]

This didn't happen again, and I don't know any specific steps to provoke it. I think it only happened when trying to install a partial upgrade (neccessary due to the usual dependency problems in the alpha stages), but I'm not 100% sure.

[WeatherGod (ben-v-root)]

Since this bug is not reproducible, and because the original bug reporter has not provided any additional information, I am going to have to mark this report as "Invalid". If more information can be gathered, then please reopen this report.