Removing unattended-upgrades removes ubuntu-server-minimal

[Matthew Ruffell]

On Impish and later, removing unattended-upgrades also removes ubuntu-server-minimal due to ubuntu-server-minimal depending on unattended-upgrades

$ sudo apt remove unattended-upgrades
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  ubuntu-server-minimal unattended-upgrades
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

This behaviour has changed since ubuntu-meta 1.471 [1] when the ubuntu-server-minimal metapackage was introduced, declaring unattended-upgrades as Depends.

[1] https://launchpadlibrarian.net/550345392/ubuntu-meta_1.470_1.471.diff.gz

On Focal, there was no such behaviour on a fresh ubuntu-server install:

$ sudo apt remove unattended-upgrades
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  unattended-upgrades
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.

Removing unattended-upgrades is quite popular amongst our users, and they should be allowed to remove the package without removing the ubuntu-server-minimal metapackage.

Looking at the source package for ubuntu-meta, unattended-upgrades is only Depends for ubuntu-server-minimal, maybe we should simply remove it, or instead, change to recommends?

$ grep -Rin "unattended-upgrades" .
./server-minimal-armhf:23:unattended-upgrades
./server-minimal-riscv64:23:unattended-upgrades
./server-minimal-arm64:23:unattended-upgrades
./server-minimal-ppc64el:23:unattended-upgrades
./server-minimal-s390x:24:unattended-upgrades
./server-minimal-amd64:23:unattended-upgrades

$ sudo apt rdepends unattended-upgrades
unattended-upgrades
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: python3-software-properties
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-core
  Depends: freedombox
  Recommends: fbx-all
  Depends: ubuntu-server-minimal

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Matthew Ruffell (mruffell)]

This has been fixed as of ubuntu-meta 1.474
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/1.474

$ sudo apt rdepends unattended-upgrades
unattended-upgrades
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: python3-software-properties
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-core
  Depends: freedombox
  Recommends: fbx-all
  Recommends: ubuntu-server-minimal
  Recommends: ubuntu-server

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that specific release.