Patch to polkit policy breaks automatic/unattended updates

[Bleuzen]

In Kubuntu KDE system settings, there is an option to enable automatic updates. However I wondered why this never actually updated the system, despite that I had automatic updates enabled for some time.

Turns out, KDE uses Discover to update the system unattended. And discover uses packagekit to trigger offline updates.

Now here is the problem: Usually this would work. It does on other distros which don't patch the polkit policy. But not on (K)ubuntu.

In the package sources there is a patch for the debian/ubuntu package:
<packagesrc>/debian/patches/policy.diff

This patch does change the permission to do offline updates from all active users to only admins.

Here:

```
@@ -273,7 +271,7 @@

   <action id="org.freedesktop.packagekit.trigger-offline-update">
     <!-- SECURITY:
- - Normal users are able to ask updates to be installed at
+ - Administrators are able to ask updates to be installed at
             early boot time without a password.
      -->
     <description>Trigger offline updates</description>
@@ -282,7 +280,7 @@
     <defaults>
       <allow_any>auth_admin</allow_any>
       <allow_inactive>auth_admin</allow_inactive>
- <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
+ <allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active>
     </defaults>
   </action>
```

With this patch, it prompts the user for a password before allowing offline updates. Now in unattended update mode, this prompt is hidden.

So basically with that patch, unattended updates on Kubuntu just fail silently.

Removing this patch (or at least reverting the change in this "org.freedesktop.packagekit.trigger-offline-update" action) makes auto updates work again.

Please remove this change from the patch (or even the whole patch? this was last modified in 2012, so should be reviewed if still needed).

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

This probably should be reassigned to the kde settings package. The way we approach upgrades in *Ubuntu is that they are done online and attended, except for security updates, which are installed automatically by unattended-upgrades.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Aroun (aroun-olorin)]

Seem the action is allowed in 22.04