Allow delay of update-manager download start to use cheap bandwidth

[Gerv]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Downloads via update-manager can be hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes, particularly if one is helping test and a lot of packages are changing.

On the plan I have, bandwidth is free from midnight to 8am but not at other times. So I would like to do the downloading during this period. However, I don't want to have to stay up until midnight to set it off.

If there was a command-line switch for "do all the downloads, no questions asked" I could use sleep or some other delaying script. That would be fine. But there is no such option. Can we have one please, or some other mechanism by which to delay the upgrade process to a certain time?

Gerv

[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

Not something that's likely to get done before Hardy release but I'll add this to the wishlist to be looked at later

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

You may play with the command "at" (see the at man page).

With it you can run something like (as root):
$ sudo at 00:01 tomorrow
at> apt-get update
at> apt-get --download-only -y dist-upgrade
at> [press ctrl-d when finished]

This will download the debs into a local cache. When you get up in the morning, you can start update-manager and it will use the downloaded ones.

[Gerv (gerv)]

That's handy to know. Although it seems to me that internet tariffs with "unlimited" time and "pay-per-GB" time are reasonably common, so it would be useful if update-manager had a GUI option to set a time at which to start the process. Or even a way to say "Run an update at time X:XX every Y days."

Gerv

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

So what you're basically suggesting is a bandwidth scheduling or traffic shaping / throttle schedule?
deluge-torrent has something similar to what you suggest for bittorrent downloads, a plugin that can set the download/upload rate to full or lower or even disable at some times of the day, with a single mouse click you can affect a lot of times during the day/week. Could be useful if such an application will ever be created :)

[Gerv (gerv)]

Nothing so complicated. Let's not let the best be the enemy of the good. I'm just asking for a delay mechanism (Start at time X, or Start in X hours).

Gerv

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

>That's handy to know. Although it seems to me that internet tariffs with "unlimited" time and "pay-per-GB" time are reasonably common, so it would be useful if update-manager had a GUI option to set a time at which to start the process. Or even a way to say "Run an update at time X:XX every Y days."

Try the package: gnome-schedule
For system commands: gksu gnome-schedule

http://gnome-schedule.sourceforge.net/

It uses /etc/cronrab (or similar files) to create the rules and run them.
You could set a rule to run a script (name the following and save it as e.g. /home/update.sh ):

#!/bin/bash
aptitude update
aptitude -y upgrade

[Gerv (gerv)]

Savvas: that's great, but it's not exactly something the average user could do. Either we need to make gnome-schedule drag-and-drop (drag an icon onto it and it sets up a scheduled task), pre-populate it with the most commonly-requested tasks, or we need to build this in to Update Manager.

Gerv