> during my tests in a bionic VM, I also observed once that
> prepared-update file being created without interaction with
> gnome-software: I simply ran "sudo apt update" in a terminal window,
> then requested shutdown, and the dialog offered to install updates,
> so something else also triggered packagekit
I am able to reproduce that behaviour rather reliably in a cosmic VM, and this doesn't happen if I kill gnome-software that's running as a daemon, so it looks like gnome-software is the culprit in that case too.
> during my tests in a bionic VM, I also observed once that
> prepared-update file being created without interaction with
> gnome-software: I simply ran "sudo apt update" in a terminal window,
> then requested shutdown, and the dialog offered to install updates,
> so something else also triggered packagekit
I am able to reproduce that behaviour rather reliably in a cosmic VM, and this doesn't happen if I kill gnome-software that's running as a daemon, so it looks like gnome-software is the culprit in that case too.