Origin pattern is unexpected on dpkg-reconfigure

[Mark Shuttleworth]

In testing out the new unattended-upgrades behaviour I was asked an unexpected question about the "unattended-upgrades Origin-Pattern". This is not a great experience, it doesn't match anything other than internal code patterns.

For example, the default offered does NOT look like a sensible Ubuntu default for Ubuntu users:

  "origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian-Security";___

Is that correct, or a mistake?

What I would expect is simply this:

 Install security updates (Y/N)
 Install performance and reliability updates (Y/N)
 Install updates from unofficial archives (Y/N)

The latter would map to all PPAs etc.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Iiro Laiho (iiro)]

The questions don't even seem to affect everything. Maybe they should be disabled altogether.

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

Confirmed that in bionic it offers this Origins-Pattern in the "Configuring unattended-upgrades" debconf question:

"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian-Security";

That should be Ubuntu, or ${distro_id} perhaps. That being said, it doesn't seem to be used in the end, because my 50unattended-upgrades file has no mention of Debian and uses ${distro_id} everywhere.

[Jan Claeys (janc)]

Also, what about the other settings (e.g. package blacklist) in that file? Does/should it preserve those, warn about overwriting them, ...?

[Balint Reczey (rbalint)]

The pattern is not used, I already scheduled a commit to drop the question even in Debian:
https://github.com/rbalint/unattended-upgrades/commit/00eed46d48b316ff3dca153f3f676586ef5f4173

[Balint Reczey (rbalint)]

With the fix for this bug I'm dropping the clearly obsolete question, but IMO adding different questions would confuse less experienced users.

I think power users who can cope with regressions caused by packages from sources coming from sources not allowed by unattended-upgrades by default should be able to change the u-u configuration file - or add new configuration files overriding default values.

Optionally updating packages automatically from PPAs or unofficial sources would be indeed be a feature that could be made available in an easier way, but I think it would be better to track this potential improvement in a separate bug.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 0.99ubuntu2

---------------
unattended-upgrades (0.99ubuntu2) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Run upgrade-between-snapshots only on amd64.
    The test exercises only unattented-upgrade's Python code and uses
    dependencies from the frozen Debian snapshot archive thus running
    it on all architectures would provide little benefit.

 -- Balint Reczey <email address hidden> Tue, 13 Feb 2018 11:41:20 +0700

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Hello Mark, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.0 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

Hello Mark, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

Hello Mark, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Balint Reczey (rbalint)]

Verified with 1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2 on Xenial.

root@x-uu-lp-1260041:~# dpkg -l unattended-upgrades | cat
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-===================-==========================-============-===========================================
ii unattended-upgrades 1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2 all automatic installation of security upgrades
root@x-uu-lp-1260041:~# dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades
root@x-uu-lp-1260041:~# env DEBIAN_FRONTEND=readline dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades
Configuring unattended-upgrades
-------------------------------

Applying updates on a frequent basis is an important part of keeping systems secure. By default, updates need to be applied manually using package management tools.
Alternatively, you can choose to have this system automatically download and install important updates.

Automatically download and install stable updates? [yes/no] yes

root@x-uu-lp-1260041:~#

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2

---------------
unattended-upgrades (1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Don't check blacklist too early and report updates from not allowed origins
    as kept back. (LP: #1781176)
  * test/test_blacklisted_wrong_origin.py: Fix and enable test
  * Filter out progress indicator from dpkg log (LP: #1599646)
  * Clear cache when autoremoval fails (LP: #1779157)
  * Find autoremovable kernel packages using the patterns in APT's way
    (LP: #1815494)

unattended-upgrades (1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Start service after systemd-logind.service to be able to take inhibition
    lock (LP: #1806487)
  * Handle gracefully when logind is down (LP: #1806487)

unattended-upgrades (1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.0) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Backport to Xenial (LP: #1702793)
  * Revert to build-depending on debhelper (>= 9~) and dh-systemd
  * Revert configuration example changes to avoid triggering a debconf question
  * debian/postinst: Update recovery to be triggered on Xenial's package versions

unattended-upgrades (1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Trigger unattended-upgrade-shutdown actions with PrepareForShutdown()
    Performing upgrades in service's ExecStop did not work when the upgrades
    involved restarting services because systemd blocked other stop/start
    actions making maintainer scripts time out and be killed leaving a broken
    system behind.
    Running unattended-upgrades.service before shutdown.target as a oneshot
    service made it run after unmounting filesystems and scheduling services
    properly on shutdown is a complex problem and adding more services to the
    mix make it even more fragile.
    The solution of monitoring PrepareForShutdown() signal from DBus
    allows Unattended Upgrade to run _before_ the jobs related to shutdown are
    queued thus package upgrades can safely restart services without
    risking causing deadlocks or breaking part of the shutdown actions.
    Also ask running unattended-upgrades to stop when shutdown starts even in
    InstallOnShutdown mode and refactor most of unattended-upgrade-shutdown to
    UnattendedUpgradesShutdown class. (LP: #1778219)
  * Increase logind's InhibitDelayMaxSec to 30s. (LP: #1778219)
    This allows more time for unattended-upgrades to shut down gracefully
    or even install a few packages in InstallOnShutdown mode, but is still a
    big step back from the 30 minutes allowed for InstallOnShutdown previously.
    Users enabling InstallOnShutdown node are advised to increase
    InhibitDelayMaxSec even further possibly to 30 minutes.
    - Add NEWS entry about increasing InhibitDelayMaxSec and InstallOnShutdown
      changes
  * Ignore "W503 line break before binary operator"
    because it will become the best practice and breaks the build
  * Stop using ActionGroups, they interfere with apt.Cache.clear()
    causing all autoremovable packages to be handled as newly autoremovable
    ones and be removed by default. Dropping ActionGroup usage does not slow
    down the most frequent case of not having anything to upgrade a...