Taming the beast

[Nevyn]

As part of the school project I disabled Update Manager from Ubuntu.
The reason for this is that it's just plain scary. My mother has
conniptions every time she sees it. It does nothing to be friendly.
For the most part, users don't really need to know how many "packages"
(remember, most of your end users think in terms of applications thus
200 packages updated comes across as just about their entire system)
are being updated. Rather, all you need to know is that the system is
updating and you probably shouldn't shut down your system while this
is going on.

So I created my own update manager type of package. It picks a random
time, downloads all of the packages it needs to update and then asks
the user if they'd like to update now. It tells them if they're going
to need to restart their computer afterwards. It doesn't really go
into details. Only... there's a problem. Grub-PC seems quite insistent
that the user must pick whether to keep /etc/default/grub as is on the
system or whether it should replace it

So on to the question. I know a silent install is possible - otherwise
what would unattended upgrades use? Of course, being completely silent
is only going to end in tears given that shutting down half way
through a upgrade has a fairly high probability of leaving you with a
unusable system so I need some feedback. Just

I've tried amending the upgrade command with:
-o DPkg::Options=--force-confdef -o DPkg::Options=--force-confold

so that it reads:
apt-get -Y dist-upgrade -o DPkg::Options=--force-confdef -o
DPkg::Options=--force-confold

Does anyone have any clues as to how to fix this?

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Cliff Pratt]

Post by Nevyn
As part of the school project I disabled Update Manager from Ubuntu.
The reason for this is that it's just plain scary. My mother has
conniptions every time she sees it. It does nothing to be friendly.
For the most part, users don't really need to know how many
"packages" (remember, most of your end users think in terms of
applications thus 200 packages updated comes across as just about
their entire system) are being updated. Rather, all you need to know
is that the system is updating and you probably shouldn't shut down
your system while this is going on.

<troll>
Oh, like Windows does you mean?
</troll>

Cheers,

Cliff

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[Nevyn]

Post by Cliff Pratt

Post by Nevyn
As part of the school project I disabled Update Manager from Ubuntu.
The reason for this is that it's just plain scary. My mother has
conniptions every time she sees it. It does nothing to be friendly.
For the most part, users don't really need to know how many
"packages" (remember, most of your end users think in terms of
applications thus 200 packages updated comes across as just about
their entire system) are being updated. Rather, all you need to know
is that the system is updating and you probably shouldn't shut down
your system while this is going on.

<troll>
Oh, like Windows does you mean?
</troll>
Cheers,
Cliff

The difference being that it actually updates. No clicking on the
flash tray icon or having to download updates when loading up open
office or loading up the vendors web site to get new drivers etc.

One application to update them all.

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Robin Sheat]

Post by Nevyn
Of course, being completely silent
is only going to end in tears given that shutting down half way
through a upgrade has a fairly high probability of leaving you with a
unusable system so I need some feedback.

Ubuntu has a system that delays shutdown to allow unattended upgrades to
complete. I know very little about it, but if you wanted to see how to hook
into it, start by looking at /etc/init.d/unattended-upgrades.

The existence of this implies that Ubuntu has a mechanism for doing unattended
upgrades and so you might be reinventing the wheel.

Robin.

[Nevyn]

Post by Robin Sheat

Post by Nevyn
Of course, being completely silent
is only going to end in tears given that shutting down half way
through a upgrade has a fairly high probability of leaving you with a
unusable system so I need some feedback.

Ubuntu has a system that delays shutdown to allow unattended upgrades to
complete. I know very little about it, but if you wanted to see how to hook
into it, start by looking at /etc/init.d/unattended-upgrades.
The existence of this implies that Ubuntu has a mechanism for doing unattended
upgrades and so you might be reinventing the wheel.
Robin.

I conceded to using update-manager to deal with partial distribution
upgrades (where you'd normally use "apt-get dist-upgrade"). I'm not
entirely use how this is going to go - I haven't done a full test yet.

I'm disappointed that I can't make it download all updates before
showing a dialogue. apt-get dist-upgrade -d has completed and yet
update-manager still wants to download files.

Does anyone know if there's a way to get a list of the packages that
update-manager is going to install?

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Vik Olliver]

Post by Nevyn
Does anyone know if there's a way to get a list of the packages that
update-manager is going to install?

You can do "apt-get -s upgrade" which will simulate what happens with an
upgrade.

Vik :v)

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[Nevyn]

Post by Vik Olliver

Post by Nevyn
Does anyone know if there's a way to get a list of the packages that
update-manager is going to install?

You can do "apt-get -s upgrade" which will simulate what happens with an
upgrade.
Vik :v)

I finally figured out what was going on. Update-manager wanted to
restore things to a standard build. So it wanted to pull in things
like OpenOffice which was purposefully taken out. So instead I'm
getting it to pop up a gnome terminal window with the upgrade taking
place and holding the especially troublesome applications. Ideally I'd
only have a window pop up only if there input is required.

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Craig Box]

Post by Nevyn
I finally figured out what was going on. Update-manager wanted to
restore things to a standard build. So it wanted to pull in things
like OpenOffice which was purposefully taken out. So instead I'm
getting it to pop up a gnome terminal window with the upgrade taking
place and holding the especially troublesome applications. Ideally I'd
only have a window pop up only if there input is required.

Do you have the ubuntu-desktop package installed? That is a metapackage
which includes things like Evolution and OpenOffice.org, which is generally
removed by dependencies the first time you remove one of those things. I'm
not sure this is the problem though, as I'd be surprised that update-manager
would try and restore OO.o and "apt-get upgrade" would not.
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[Nevyn]

Do you have the ubuntu-desktop package installed?  That is a metapackage
which includes things like Evolution and OpenOffice.org, which is generally
removed by dependencies the first time you remove one of those things. I'm
not sure this is the problem though, as I'd be surprised that update-manager
would try and restore OO.o and "apt-get upgrade" would not.

Definitely not installed. It's one of the first things that went. It's
probably got more to do with me specifying --dist-upgrade to avoid the
"do you want to continue?" screen. I really want to spare users from
the tedious details.

Hopefully it won't come up too often. I'm holding those packages that
are especially causing me grief.

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Robin Sheat]

Post by Nevyn
I'm disappointed that I can't make it download all updates before
showing a dialogue.

Did you look in the settings? There's a tick box for it.

Robin.

[Mark Robinson]

Post by Nevyn
As part of the school project I disabled Update Manager from Ubuntu.
The reason for this is that it's just plain scary. My mother has
conniptions every time she sees it. It does nothing to be friendly.
For the most part, users don't really need to know how many "packages"
(remember, most of your end users think in terms of applications thus
200 packages updated comes across as just about their entire system)
are being updated. Rather, all you need to know is that the system is
updating and you probably shouldn't shut down your system while this
is going on.
So I created my own update manager type of package. It picks a random
time, downloads all of the packages it needs to update and then asks
the user if they'd like to update now. It tells them if they're going
to need to restart their computer afterwards. It doesn't really go
into details. Only... there's a problem. Grub-PC seems quite insistent
that the user must pick whether to keep /etc/default/grub as is on the
system or whether it should replace it

Perhaps Grub-PC needs a non-default configuration, dunno, I don't use it. In
any case you want to fix this problem rather than overriding it in the upgrade
process. A broken boot loader is a very bad thing in a remote machine, and you
*will* end up with a broken boot loader.

Post by Nevyn
So on to the question. I know a silent install is possible - otherwise
what would unattended upgrades use? Of course, being completely silent
is only going to end in tears given that shutting down half way
through a upgrade has a fairly high probability of leaving you with a
unusable system so I need some feedback. Just
-o DPkg::Options=--force-confdef -o DPkg::Options=--force-confold
apt-get -Y dist-upgrade -o DPkg::Options=--force-confdef -o
DPkg::Options=--force-confold
Does anyone have any clues as to how to fix this?

It would be better to use safe-upgrade rather than dist-upgrade for unattended
upgrades.

An unattended dist-upgrade *will* break your system one day, especially if your
boot loader is not quite right.

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[Nevyn]

Post by Mark Robinson

Post by Nevyn
As part of the school project I disabled Update Manager from Ubuntu.
The reason for this is that it's just plain scary. My mother has
conniptions every time she sees it. It does nothing to be friendly.
For the most part, users don't really need to know how many "packages"
(remember, most of your end users think in terms of applications thus
200 packages updated comes across as just about their entire system)
are being updated. Rather, all you need to know is that the system is
updating and you probably shouldn't shut down your system while this
is going on.
So I created my own update manager type of package. It picks a random
time, downloads all of the packages it needs to update and then asks
the user if they'd like to update now. It tells them if they're going
to need to restart their computer afterwards. It doesn't really go
into details. Only... there's a problem. Grub-PC seems quite insistent
that the user must pick whether to keep /etc/default/grub as is on the
system or whether it should replace it

Perhaps Grub-PC needs a non-default configuration, dunno, I don't use it. In
any case you want to fix this problem rather than overriding it in the
upgrade process. A broken boot loader is a very bad thing in a remote
machine, and you *will* end up with a broken boot loader.

Post by Nevyn
So on to the question. I know a silent install is possible - otherwise
what would unattended upgrades use? Of course, being completely silent
is only going to end in tears given that shutting down half way
through a upgrade has a fairly high probability of leaving you with a
unusable system so I need some feedback. Just
-o DPkg::Options=--force-confdef -o DPkg::Options=--force-confold
apt-get -Y dist-upgrade -o DPkg::Options=--force-confdef -o
DPkg::Options=--force-confold
Does anyone have any clues as to how to fix this?

It would be better to use safe-upgrade rather than dist-upgrade for
unattended upgrades.
An unattended dist-upgrade *will* break your system one day, especially if
your boot loader is not quite right.

Oh pish posh.

The boot loader is not going to break from /etc/default having a value
or two changed. 1. It's not actually used during boot time. 2. It
hasn't changed syntax or anything. It's that Ubuntu's always right
attitude that had me leaving it in the first place. it's a pity they
chose to go in that direction.

It's a red herring designed to be scary. Rather than looking at the
current configuration and saying "the values look sane", and the
bootloader is installed on /dev/sda, it wants the user to decide this.
The user would not have changed /etc/default/grub if they hadn't
intended to and 90% of your users are going to be intimated by the
next question. Hell, I answered it wrong the first time around...

It's just plain bloody mindedness.

I realise I probably shouldn't be doing an unattended dist-upgrade.
Never the less, I am. The thing is, can I get Ubuntu to act in a sane
way?... It doesn't actually matter if the systems do break. The
default position is to reimage. Their work is in the cloud so what's
on the netbooks doesn't matter too much.

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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