apt-get update runs apt-check at nice 19

[Tom Womack]

When I try to install a new package on one of my compute nodes which are running one nice-0 task per hyperthread, there is an extremely long delay at the end of installation as apt-check is running at nice 19 and getting almost no cycles. Renicing it to -5 resolves the problem at once.

It is not reasonable to make a human who you know to be sitting at the console wait for a task running at nice 19 on a busy machine to finish, especially if you're holding the dpkg lock the whole time.

This is with 16.04.4

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1781772/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

apt-check is part of update-notifier. That said, this does not seem to be hooked into apt, at least in 18.04. Does

grep -R apt-check /etc

tell you anything?

[Tom Womack (tom-womack)]

grep -R apt-check /etc

on my ubuntu-16.04 boxes exhibiting this problem

shows nothing

Tom

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for update-notifier (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]