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Olimjon
Asked: 2018-07-19 22:23:53 +0800 CST

How to remove Ubuntu's automatic internet connection needs?

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Imagine that, I have a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 installed. But there are some default packages or services that connects to the Internet without my consent. How to get rid of them completely or make them offline in an effective way?

As far as I now, they are:

popularity-contest - The Ubuntu Popularity Contest (or popcon, in short) gathers statistics determining which packages are the most popular with Ubuntu users.

unattended-upgrades - Automatically upgrades computer with the latest security updates.

apt-daily - Updates apt index every day automatically.

snapd - Updates snap packages automatically.

update-manager - Checks for release updates.

I could be missing something. Please post if you know...

The purpose: I want to have full control over the Internet, as in my case, Internet is limited. So, I wish to update or upgrade manually rather than automatically.

apt unattended-upgrades popcon offline snap

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Popularity contest is disabled by default. You can check and disable it with:

    dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest

    You can do ...

    apt remove popularity-contest

    to remove it too.

    Disable apt-daily.service:

    systemctl stop apt-daily.timer
systemctl disable apt-daily.timer
systemctl disable apt-daily.service
systemctl stop apt-daily-upgrade.timer
systemctl disable apt-daily-upgrade.timer
systemctl disable apt-daily-upgrade.service

    One-liner from @muru <3:

    systemctl disable --now apt-daily{,-upgrade}.{timer,service}

    Disable unattended upgrade:

    dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

    Update manager can only be stopped by removing it:

    apt purge update-manager-core

    You can NOT disable automatic update for snaps. You can set the period when it updates with snap set core refresh.schedule=<spec> but the system will ignore this is if it took too long to update snaps and that would be within 24 hours. This will remove anything snap related:

    apt purge snapd ubuntu-core-launcher squashfs-tools

    A less intrusive method would be to prevent connection to the server by adding a DENY to your firewall rules (or in the router). To disable the systemd service would be ...

    systemctl disable snapd.refresh.service

    but that too seems to ignore the 24 hour period.

    Regarding snaps:

    The agreed semantics to be implemented are the following:

    • Refreshes may be scheduled at an arbitrary weekday and time within the month (e.g. second Tuesday between 1pm and 2pm).
    • Refreshes may be deferred for up to another month so that missed windows and re-scheduling may happen without strange side effects. For example, if it was scheduled for the first day, and then gets scheduled for the end of the month just before it happens, there may effectively be a two months window without refreshes.
    • If the system remains out-of-date after the two months window, the system will start attempting to refresh out of the window.
    • That maximum window is reset every time the system is refreshed, so out-of-band updates may performed at a convenient maintenance window.

    So a window of 2 months is possible if you do not reboot.

    I do disagree with your way of thinking though. Except for contest (and that one is not active) all of these are about fixing bugs and providing better content. You will make your system LESS secure by disabling these options.

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