anacron jobs run with wrong environment variables

[Andrey Bondarenko]

In Ubuntu 13.04 (anacron-2.3-19ubuntu2) is started from /etc/cron.d/anacron like this

start -q anacron

This means anacron itself and its child processes would inherit environment from init/upstart not from crond. As result all environment variables defined in /etc/environment won't be set (upstart does not use pam_env.so). In my case, this leads to debtags job failed with network unreachable error, because my host is behind a proxy and http_proxy variable is defined in /etc/environment.

The bug does not affect Debian with Init System V, because invoke-rc.d would start rc script directly.

I suppose anacron should be either started directly from /etc/cron.d/anacron or modified so it use pam to properly initialize session for a job.

[latimerio (fomember)]

I administer >100 hosts with 12.04LTS and 14.04LTS and the problem with anacron not respecting proxy settings is very annoying.
I have set the proxy in /etc/apt/apt.d/95proxies in /etc/environment and with gsettings as recommended in http://askubuntu.com/questions/150210/how-do-i-set-systemwide-proxy-servers-in-xubuntu-lubuntu-or-ubuntu-studio but still anacron reports errors from e.g. update-notifier-common that it cannot update the flashplugin

/etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader", line 234, in process_download_requests
    dest_file = urllib.urlretrieve(files[i])[0]
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib.py", line 93, in urlretrieve
    return _urlopener.retrieve(url, filename, reporthook, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib.py", line 239, in retrieve
    fp = self.open(url, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib.py", line 207, in open
    return getattr(self, name)(url)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib.py", line 344, in open_http
    h.endheaders(data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 954, in endheaders
    self._send_output(message_body)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 814, in _send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 776, in send
    self.connect()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 757, in connect
    self.timeout, self.source_address)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/socket.py", line 571, in create_connection
    raise err
IOError: [Errno socket error] [Errno 101] Network is unreachable
flashplugin-installer: downloading http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_11.2.202.394.orig.tar.gz

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Josep Pujadas-Jubany (jpujades)]

/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader from update-notifier uses python urllib

It seems to be problems when using proxies. In addition, urllib doesn't supports https protocol.

https://docs.python.org/2/library/urllib.html#urllib-restrictions

Using a http proxy, adobe-flashplugin updates will work but not allways:

urllib.urlretrieve("http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_11.2.202.425.orig.tar.gz", "adobe-flashplugin.tar.gz")

Using a https proxy, pepflashpluguin updates will never work:

urllib.urlretrieve("https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/pool/main/g/google-chrome-stable/google-chrome-stable_39.0.2171.95-1_i386.deb", "google-chrome.deb")

So, scripts must be something like:

export http_proxy=http://192.168.0.1:3128
export https_proxy=https://192.168.0.1:3128
apt-get install -y flashplugin-installer
apt-get install -y pepflashplugin-installer
echo "" >> /etc/chromium-browser/default
echo ". /usr/lib/pepflashplugin-installer/pepflashplayer.sh" >> /etc/chromium-browser/default
echo "" >> /etc/chromium-browser/default
unset http_proxy
unset https_proxy
apt-get --reinstall install -y flashplugin-installer
apt-get --reinstall install -y pepflashplugin-installer

Of course, if yo do this, your corporative firewall/proxy must allow direct connections to archive.canonical.com (http) and dl-ssl.google.com (https).

In my opinion, update-notifier (and other applications using urllib) should avoid python urllib

There are many bugs related (in fact, they are duplicated):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/anacron/+bug/1209146
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/1098233
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/1037662
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/1005837
https://bugs.launchpad.net/zc.buildout/+bug/484735

[Josep Pujadas-Jubany (jpujades)]

More bugs about this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/983559
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/820383