Getting update notifications although up-to-date via aptitude

Bug #918656 reported by Stephan Springer
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
aptitude
Fix Committed
Unknown
update-notifier (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I'm getting notifications that my system and/or the package list is not up-to-date every few days via the Gnome panel, although I'm running aptitude regularly to update the package list *and* the system.

After looking around a bit, I guess the culprit is the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/15update-stamp, which touches /var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp, while /etc/cron.daily/apt checks the age of the file /var/lib/apt/periodic/update-stamp (without "success-").

This makes this cron script wrongly think that an update is needed.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: update-notifier-common 0.117ubuntu3.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-14.23-server 3.0.9
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-server x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jan 19 13:26:24 2012
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: update-notifier
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.apt.apt.conf.d.10periodic:
 APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
 APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";
 APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "7";
mtime.conffile..etc.apt.apt.conf.d.10periodic: 2012-01-19T12:25:51.616232

Revision history for this message
Stephan Springer (geryon) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) wrote :

The attachment "Suggested fix" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-reviewers team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

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tags: added: patch
Revision history for this message
Stephan Springer (geryon) wrote :

I have noticed another issue: These settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/15update-stamp aren't triggered at all here (regardless whether they are correct or not, I'm not sure any more).

I am only using aptitude, and running «aptitude -u» or pressing «u» inside aptitude doesn't touch the stamp as it should. But if I run «apt-get update» once, this will touch the stamp and keep the notification silent for the next few days.

Changed in aptitude:
status: Unknown → New
Changed in aptitude:
status: New → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Dominique Brazziel (dbrazziel) wrote :

I've noticed the 'update-success-stamp' time being updated at two times during the day:

1) After '/etc/cron.daily/apt' runs (between 4:30 and 5pm on my system). At this time the timestamp matches that of '/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-stamp.
2) Early in the morning, about 12 hours later, and it seems to be triggered by packagekit, which is configured to check for updates once a day and to only install security updates (see 'gpk-prefs'). I will check to see if turning off the packagekit updates stops the additional update checks from running. Evidence of past update-notifier/apt/packagekit activity is in the output of 'lastcomm | grep apt-check' (also, look for packagekitd finishing after the apt-check'). Another way to see what is happening in rael time is to add the '--debug updates' and '--debug inotify' flags to update-notifier

 The methodology of update-notifier (and packagekit) regarding the security updates seems to be to try and run when the system is 'idle', and there are a lot of notations in the update-notifiier source. The cause of getting notifications even though the system is up to date is due to the 'update-success-stamp' being more than 7 days old. See u-n/src/update.c function 'outdated_nag', which is called from function 'update_check()':

static gboolean
outdated_nag(TrayApplet *ta)
{
   struct stat buf;
   if ((stat("/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp", &buf) == 0) &&
       (time(NULL) - buf.st_mtime > OUTDATED_NAG_AGE) ) {
      gtk_status_icon_set_visible (ta->tray_icon, TRUE);
      ta->name = "gtk-dialog-warning-panel";
      GdkPixbuf *src = gtk_icon_theme_load_icon(gtk_icon_theme_get_default(),
                                                ta->name, 48,
                                                GTK_ICON_LOOKUP_GENERIC_FALLBACK,
                                                NULL);
      gtk_status_icon_set_from_pixbuf(ta->tray_icon, src);
      g_object_unref(src);
      gtk_status_icon_set_tooltip(ta->tray_icon,
                                  _("The update information is outdated. "
                                    "This may be caused by network "
                                    "problems or by a repository that "
                                    "is no longer available. "
                                    "Please update manually "
                                    "by clicking on this icon and then "
                                    "selecting 'Check for updates' and "
                                    "check if some of the listed "
                                    "repositories fail."
                                 ));
   }
   return FALSE;
}

I think if '/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp' is touched to bring it up to date (i.e. less than 7 days old) the nag message goes away.
If '/etc/cron.daily/15update-stamp' is changed to not reference '/var/lib/apt/update-success-stamp' that would break some checks in update-notifier/
See the aforementioned 'update-c' and 'update-notifier.c'.

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