terminal window in update-manager does not resize correctly

[daniel venema]

After starting update-manager and I choose to install available updates, I click on the details option to view update progress in a terminal window. However, the terminal window only shows one line and does not render in the size of the window I am dragging.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: update-manager 1:17.10.11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-17.20-generic 4.13.8
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-17-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Dec 4 08:08:14 2017
GsettingsChanges:
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'show-details' b'true'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'window-height' b'577'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'first-run' b'false'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'window-width' b'957'
 b'com.ubuntu.update-manager' b'launch-time' b'int64 1512371241'
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-10-09 (55 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Beta amd64 (20171008)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[peter swain (swine)]

Me, too.
I've seen this before, and fixed it by rolling in a patch someone proposed last time it was seen (about 15.04/15.10?).
Now it's happening again on 17.10, so I suspect the fix, which had later rolled into some python support package, has come unstuck in a more recent revision.
Actually it began affecting this machine some time before 17.10, but I was hoping the 17.10 rollout would banish the problem. Not so. 1:17.10.11 still gives me a 1-line terminal window.

I've just tried removing/purging/adding update-manager(-core) and all that depend on it,
then downgrading/upgrading a package to see if the terminal window's height was restored.
Nope, it's not that easy.

I'll keep hunting, but later.
From memory, it was failing to do a sanity check on a cached window-size property found in some ~/.gconf/.../%gconf.xml, but I can't find anything likely. Could now be a different problem.

I suspect everything works fine until accidental resize below some threshold size causes the small size to stick. I recall thinking that a bounds check might be backward, intending to protect against too-small, but instead /latching/ the too-small condition. But I don't recall if the previous fix actually matched that hypothesis