Software Updates widget can no longer install packages, asks user to run 'zypper dup' manually

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098922

The package updater in the Plasma system tray is no longer able to install updates. It will detect new packages, but instead of offering an install button it now tells you “run ‘zypper dup’ manually”.

This renders the update widget useless: It now does nothing but show you a list of new packages. Further more, the updater won’t even detect that you’ve installed those packages after you do run ‘zypper dup’ and will keep the tray icon active forever, making it even more of an annoyance as you need to restart plasmashell to get rid of the outdated notification.

I was told this might be a deliberate decision on Tumbleweed, as a normal ‘zypper up’ might leave the system broken (I never had that problem). If that is the case, my suggestion solution would be teaching the widget how to run ‘zypper dup’ on its own: It will need to ask for a root password each time you click install, but this is far better than disabling its update functionality entirely and leaving Tumbleweed users without an embedded package manager altogether.

This has been done on purpose.

TW should only be updated by using “zypper dup”.
PackageKit (and therefore the applet) does the equivalent of “zypper up” though, which might even break the system (because not all updates are installed properly).

There were many complaints about this (and people asking for help because their system didn’t work anymore after installing updates) on the forums and mailinglists.

Ideally, PackageKit would fully support updating TW (by doing something like “zypper dup”), but that still hasn’t been implemented yet, and it doesn’t really look like it’s happening soon.

This renders the update widget useless

Not completely, it will still notify you of updates.

Before it was just as useless, as you shouldn’t be using it to update anyway.

Further more, the updater won’t even detect that you’ve installed those packages after you do run ‘zypper dup’ and will keep the tray icon active forever, making it even more of an annoyance as you need to restart plasmashell to get rid of the outdated notification.

Ok, I can see that this might be annoying.
Although I thought this was addressed meanwhile… :\

Running “pkcon get-updates” should refresh it as well though without having to restart plasmashell.

If that is the case, my suggestion solution would be teaching the widget how to run ‘zypper dup’ on its own

Impossible. It is just a frontend to PackageKit.

Making it use zypper directly would mean writing a new applet from scratch.

Feel free to do so and submit it though.

It should be possible to teach PackageKit ('s zypp backend) to do the equivalent of “zypper dup” on TW, but again this needs to be implemented by somebody.

but this is far better than disabling its update functionality entirely and leaving Tumbleweed users without an embedded package manager altogether.

Heh?
It is no “package manager” anyway. We have YaST and zypper for that.

See this thread:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/531833-Tumbleweed-newbie-how-to-update-properly

I delete the PackageKit rpms as they serve no useful purpose in openSUSE. For Leap YaST-Online-Update is preferable.

For Leap, PackageKit works just as well, it uses libzypp (like zypper or YaST do) anyway. The only “problem” maybe is that it doesn’t allow to manually resolve conflicts but rather aborts in that case.

Btw, you can also just disable the applet in the system tray settings (or uninstall plasma5-pk-updates), no need to uninstall PackageKit completely. (although, having it installed doesn’t really make much sense either of course, if you don’t ever use it anyway)

PS:

That’s tracked as https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1009129
And making PackageKit properly support updating TW is 1030829 – PackageKit should use "zypper dup" instead of "zypper up" on Tumbleweed

Earlier we were required to reboot after each zypper dup, or otherwise we might break the system. Has this changed?

That sounds like a good change.

If you don’t want to see the updater, you can disable it in “System Tray Settings”.

TW update almost always includes a new kernel which always requires a reboot. Other packages require a restart to use the new code which can usually be done with log off log on, but if kernel changes a boot is required

Not sure what you mean.

You definitely cannot “break the system” by not rebooting after installing updates.

You may need to reboot to actually use the updates though, in particular in the case of a kernel update (otherwise it should suffice to restart the affected applications and services).

You should expect problems in the already running session/applications though if you replace the whole system beneath them… Especially if major version upgrades are involved.

Yes, this is why I reboot after an update. But I may do a few more things before I reboot.

The most frequent symptom: on my laptop, have the touchpad set to disable if a mouse is plugged in. And after some updates, that stops working until reboot – well, maybe logout and login would be enough to fix it, but might as well reboot to get everything running back to a consistent state.

I’ve been on Tumbleweed for several years now. In those years I used a mixture between system tray updates (daily) and ‘zypper dup’ (every few days). I’ve never had any issues or incomplete updates due to this reason. Of course if there is a risk for a broken system, I fully agree it must be addressed… admittedly I’ve been annoyed at how the icon always only did partial updates and I also had to ‘zypper dup’ afterward.

What upsets me is that a lot of people seem to think Tumbleweed users shouldn’t have system tray updates at all: If we use a rolling release distribution, we’re technically advanced users, so we know how to type ‘zypper dup’ in a console… therefore why would we need a common convenience such as a system tray icon to handle updates for us, when we can handle everything like the cool hackers? I know not everyone thinks that way, but when discussing those things I always got the impression it’s how a lot of people feel. In reality, Tumbleweed users do expect the same cleanness and ease that a periodic (non-rolling) release offers, and the lack of a working tray updater now feels like an essential missing feature.

1 Like

On Sun 24 Jun 2018 06:06:02 PM CDT, MirceaKitsune wrote:

I’ve been on Tumbleweed for several years now. In those years I used a
mixture between system tray updates (daily) and ‘zypper dup’ (every few
days). I’ve never had any issues or incomplete updates due to this
reason. Of course if there is a risk for a broken system, I fully agree
it must be addressed… admittedly I’ve been annoyed at how the icon
always only did partial updates and I also had to ‘zypper dup’
afterward.

What upsets me is that a lot of people seem to think Tumbleweed users
shouldn’t have system tray updates at all: If we use a rolling release
distribution, we’re technically advanced users, so we know how to type
‘zypper dup’ in a console… therefore why would we need a common
convenience such as a system tray icon to handle updates for us, when we
can handle everything like the cool hackers? I know not everyone thinks
that way, but when discussing those things I always got the impression
it’s how a lot of people feel. In reality, Tumbleweed users do expect
the same cleanness and ease that a periodic (non-rolling) release
offers, and the lack of a working tray updater now feels like an
essential missing feature.

Hi
Because Tumbleweed is also a test base for the next release and
updates, so everything should be there and functional, just not
needed… :wink:


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PackageKit is useful. Being configured properly it sends me a nice notification with subject “System updates available: erlangen” and a list of new and modified packages. Thus I definitely want to have it.

erlangen:~ # grep -v '#' /etc/sysconfig/packagekit-background
ENABLED="yes"

CHECK_ONLY="yes"

MAILTO="karl"

SYSTEM_NAME=""

SLEEP_MAX="3600"

UPDATE_OFFLINE="no"
erlangen:~ # 

This thread is labled “Tumbleweed”. Although there are current moves to make PackageKit Tumbleweed friendly, to date it has been concerned with “updates”. There are, for all practical purposes, no updates for Tumbleweed only “distribution upgrades”.

Tumbleweed is not a rolling release in the same sense as e.g. Gentoo, where updated components are released individually, Rather it is more of a rapid release distribution. The practice of “updating” Tumbleweed has been a cause of many problems chronicled in this forum.

As such you “helpful emails” must arrive about twice a week and list hundreds or thousands of rebuilt packages. There is no discrimination between security patches, major updates (which for e.g. KDE tend to be released in dribs and drabs over several upgrades) and no-change automatic rebuilds. You may enjoy reading them, but generally they serve no useful purpose, and most users would be better served with a weekly “zypper dup”.

More generally, SuSE … openSUSE have been well served by YaST Online Update, whereas PackageKit and its helpers (Kpackagekit, Apper, PackageKit-Qt etc.) have all been troublesome over the years. There is a price to pay for bling. S.u.S.E.,SuSE,SUSE (and to a slightly lesser extent openSUSE) brands have been historically distinguished by their inclination towards working, as opposed to hobbyist/enthusiast use. Some of those here are professional System Administrators and Managers. Whenever PackageKit escapes onto a workers desktop, technical support receives calls about update warnings in between scheduled maintenance.

I, personally, would prefer PackageKit to be an option, but not installed by default. I also think that where someone is having a PackageKit-related problem the simple solution is to remove it. If you like it, I have no desire to deny you your pleasure; me, I prefer Bauhouse to Baroque.

I have Tumbleweed repositories and other repositories completely unrelated to Tumbleweed. My setup serves the practical purpose of managing lots of software with minimal effort. PackageKit notifies me whenever some package is out of date.

Tumbleweed is not a rolling release in the same sense as e.g. Gentoo, where updated components are released individually, Rather it is more of a rapid release distribution. The practice of “updating” Tumbleweed has been a cause of many problems chronicled in this forum.
Tumbleweed is snapshots of Factory. If you don’t want to have them don’t apply.

As such you “helpful emails” must arrive about twice a week and list hundreds or thousands of rebuilt packages. There is no discrimination between security patches, major updates (which for e.g. KDE tend to be released in dribs and drabs over several upgrades) and no-change automatic rebuilds. You may enjoy reading them, but generally they serve no useful purpose, and most users would be better served with a weekly “zypper dup”.
Be assured: Getting notified is useful. And I run zypper dup whenever convenient or needed.

More generally, SuSE … openSUSE have been well served by YaST Online Update, whereas PackageKit and its helpers (Kpackagekit, Apper, PackageKit-Qt etc.) have all been troublesome over the years. There is a price to pay for bling. S.u.S.E.,SuSE,SUSE (and to a slightly lesser extent openSUSE) brands have been historically distinguished by their inclination towards working, as opposed to hobbyist/enthusiast use. Some of those here are professional System Administrators and Managers. Whenever PackageKit escapes onto a workers desktop, technical support receives calls about update warnings in between scheduled maintenance.
**There is absolutely no trouble associated with PackageKit: I unchecked Software Updates in the System Tray Settings. **Then I enabled background operation and notification using Yast /etc/sysconfig Editor.

I, personally, would prefer PackageKit to be an option, but not installed by default. I also think that where someone is having a PackageKit-related problem the simple solution is to remove it. If you like it, I have no desire to deny you your pleasure; me, I prefer Bauhouse to Baroque.
Again: being notified is not for pleasure. I would never want to poll for information. And I would never want to have a scheduled weekly zypper dup.

May I add a suggestion for a compromise? The issue is that the Software Updates applet uses PackageKit, which only supports the equivalent of “zypper up” and not “zypper dup”. So what if instead of the current approach, which has now changed to the applet telling you “run ‘zypper dup’ manually”, the applet could launch a console with the command ran automatically?

When you click the Install button after being informed of the updates, it could basically popup a console with ‘zypper dup’ automatically executing as the first command. The user is prompted to input the root password, and can follow the update progress in this console as they would if they opened it themselves. When the console finishes and closes, it calls the applet back and informs it to refresh so that it notices the updates were installed.

Sorry if I’m reviving old discussion here: Just wanted to know what people think of this option since I don’t think it’s been brought up yet. Having the applet constantly tell you “do it yourself” on Tumbleweed is a big annoyance, especially since after you install updates the notification won’t go away. This could be an useful temporary solution to the problem.

Please read the many other threads on this topic. If you keep thinking about “updates” you are in the wrong mindset.

In this domain “update” means applying patches and bug-fixes to the running distribution version – e.g. Leap-42.3 or Leap-5.0.

To change between versions (e.g. from Leap-42.3 to Leap-15.0) we “upgrade”, and the recommended method is via a downloaded bootable .iso image. This is because things work better when the system being upgraded is not running at the time.

  • The “dup“ in “zypper dup
    ” is an abbreviation for “distribution**-upgrade**”. For all practical purposes there are no updates for Tumbleweed. - All TW snapshots are in effect new distribution versions.

It would be better if PackageKit restricted itself to monitoring the Update-Tumbleweed repositories, then there would not be frequent notifications about thousands of new packages; but this would be inconsistent with its behaviour in other distributions. My preference is that it should remain in the repository, but be removed from the patterns so that it is not automatically installed. The pop-up is too enticing for tyros and leads to a large proportion of the Tumbleweed problems.

If there is a requirement/wish for a graphical desktop upgrade mechanism for inexperienced users of a distribution specifically advised only for the experienced or experts, then I think it should download the current NET image, install it in the swap partition and then boot from that into upgrade mode (somewhat in the manner of restarting after hibernation.

Please no more about “updating” Tumbleweed.

It’s easy to get used to calling Tumbleweed snapshots updates, even if they are theoretically more like distribution updates. If wording it this way is better, I’d like to see the applet being able to do distribution upgrades as well.

My suggestion stays otherwise: Could the Software Updates applet scan for new Tumbleweed snapshots, then automatically launch a console with “zypper dup” when clicking the install button? This still feels like the most convenient way while also perfectly safe.

In which case why not skip the update applet stage and go straight to terminal - zypper dup. It gives you the list you want and you input “y”. What could be easier than that? And you can do that as often as you want.

Now you want normal, unskilled users to be prompted (encouraged) to change their system software (distribution) without careful consideration. SUSE and openSUSE Linux are really stable and reliable until people start changing them without following the documented recommendations.

Owners should be free to change their systems any way they wish. But it is irresponsible for others to persuade them to risk breaking functionality.

It sounds almost as if you are in the business of selling paid-for support.
Or perhaps this is another Halloween Document intended to persuade the world that all Linux distributions are unstable, buggy, not to be trusted and that there is no useful software that does not come from Redmond.

Maybe you are selling bandwidth. Tumbleweed installations are big. Not everyone wants to upgrade two or three times a week. I have 32-bit minimal TW hosts that get upgraded approximately annually.