Sqerstet's questions

I have been struggling with in various forms, year after year. See here and here. Either I am configuring something wrong (unlikely), or I am using my computer in a bizarre way (I don't see it).

My computer is a laptop:

1. Before, I turned it off at night - as a result the unattended-upgrade could often not connect to the internet when it wanted to. Result: my computer was left un-upgraded and insecure for months on end.
2. These days I mostly stay logged in, but the hotspot connection is unavailable at night. So now, the unattended-upgrade runs but finds nothing to update, apparently because apt update has not been able to run successfully. Result: my computer is left un-upgraded and insecure for months on end.

How can I ensure the systemd timer for apt update does not go weeks and months between runs?

Typical output of /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log

2022-02-09 06:30:27,331 INFO Starting unattended upgrades script
2022-02-09 06:30:27,334 INFO Allowed origins are: o=Ubuntu,a=focal, o=Ubuntu,a=focal-security, o=UbuntuESMApps,a=focal-apps-security, o=UbuntuESM,a=focal-infra-security, o=UbuntuESM,a=focal-security
2022-02-09 06:30:27,335 INFO Initial blacklist: 
2022-02-09 06:30:27,336 INFO Initial whitelist (not strict): 
2022-02-09 06:30:40,279 INFO No packages found that can be upgraded unattended and no pending auto-removals

sudo systemctl status apt-daily:

* apt-daily.service - Daily apt download activities
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apt-daily.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: * apt-daily.timer
  Condition: start condition failed at Wed 2022-02-09 20:42:17 EET; 4h 17min ago
             └─ ConditionACPower=true was not met
       Docs: man:apt(8)

Feb 09 20:42:17 tbox systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Daily apt download activities being skippe>
lines 1-9/9 (END)

sudo systemctl list-timers apt-daily:

NEXT                        LEFT     LAST                        PASSED       UNIT            ACTIVATES>
Thu 2022-02-10 16:15:14 EET 15h left Wed 2022-02-09 20:42:17 EET 4h 22min ago apt-daily.timer apt-daily>

1 timers listed.
Pass --all to see loaded but inactive timers, too.
lines 1-5/5 (END)

NB: there was a reboot a few hours ago. Not plugged in but was connected to network.

FINAL CONCLUSION. Going with version of the accepted solution below, shifting the apt-daily.timer to a time when the internet connection is more likely to be available. Thanks for those who helped. The end.

Trying to mount a remote webdav directory using the command line, as an ordinary user without root privileges. It must be possible because Nautilus can do it.

Usual advice is to use mount -t davfs, but mount requires an entry in /etc/fstab.

Also tried fusedav, but this fails. Seems to be a common bug:

PROPFIND failed: 404 Not Found

wdfs is not installed.

How does Nautilus do it, and can this be copied on the command line?

When run manually, sudo unattended-upgrade finds nothing to upgrade:

No packages found that can be upgraded unattended and no pending auto-removals

But doing sudo apt update beforehand miraculously changes the situation:

Packages that will be upgraded: ...
...
All upgrades installed

The config in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades contains APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1"; as it should do. This is presumably only used by cron, which could explain the outdated package list.

Also, the manpage for unattended-upgrade says:

This script is the backend for the APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade option and designed to be run from cron (e.g. via /etc/cron.daily/apt)

Is unattended-upgrades is entirely dependent on cron, and if so does that mean it should not be run from a script?

Edit: TLDR. Running unattended-upgrades outside cron, in a shell, does not upgrade anything, even though the config looks right. Apparently this is because a separate cron job is responsible for updating the packages list. Is this behavior correct?

Ubuntu seems to have an enduring blind-spot for security upgrades on computers which are not connected permanently to the internet. These days there are surely a ton of them, mostly laptops.

In theory the solution is unattended-upgrades. On Ubuntu this runs by default with a daily systemd timer or cron job. With cron, anacron also runs by default as a protection, and executes any cron jobs which were missed because the computer was turned off. So far so sensible.

BUT!

1. Default unattended-upgrades config (/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades or similar) requires the following to be set, else upgrades risk being skipped on a roaming laptop:

   Unattended-Upgrade::OnlyOnACPower "false";
   Unattended-Upgrade::Skip-Updates-On-Metered-Connections "false";
   

2. Even worse, anacron, like cron, runs jobs whether or not an internet connection is available! This is clearly a major design bug for non-server Ubuntu, since personal computers are not always connected permanently.

TLDR: With default config, on a roaming laptop, unattended-upgrades will not work much of the time.

(Perhaps there needs to be a separate class of cron job or systemd timer-thing which waits for a network connection until executing. Or failed cron.daily jobs could be switched to cron.hourly until they execute successfully. Perhaps there is one already.)

One practical solution is a systemd unit file to execute unattended-upgrades as a user script after the network comes online. But it will only run once per boot.

What is the optimal solution? Does anyone know if there are plans to fix this with a new package or a config improvement?

Trying to customize shell prompt on a Ubuntu 18 LTS server over SSH.

On the server, the .profile sources .bashrc correctly, and .bashrc has force_color_prompt=yes uncommented. The prompt is not colored.

Tried setting it manually. It does not export:

user@ubuntu ~ $ export PS1="[ ${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u is awesome: \w ]\\$ "
user@ubuntu ~ $ echo $PS1
\u@\h \w \$

But as root it works fine:

user@ubuntu ~ $ sudo su
root@ubuntu:/home/user# export PS1="[ ${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u is awesome: \w ]\\$ "
[ root is awesome: /home/user ]#

What is going on?

Ubuntu Server 18 LTS here, with unattended-upgrades installed, and security repo enabled. It is working, as confirmed by tail /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log.

Running sudo unattended-upgrade -v manually returns the same as the most recent log entry:

Initial blacklisted packages: 
Initial whitelisted packages: 
Starting unattended upgrades script
Allowed origins are: o=Ubuntu,a=bionic, o=Ubuntu,a=bionic-security, o=UbuntuESM,a=bionic
No packages found that can be upgraded unattended and no pending auto-removals

Running sudo apt-get upgrade -s | grep -i security returns nothing.

But /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check --human-readable (which powers the message of the day) returns:

167 packages can be updated.
1 update is a security update.

What is broken?

Update. Today the apt-check count had increased to "4" pending security updates. Subsequently, running unattended-upgrade -v found and installed 3 packages. As expected, apt-check now returned "1" pending security update. What is the missing package, and above all why is unattended-upgrades not installing it?

New update. Resorted to this hacky solution of forking a security-only security.sources.list and then doing sudo apt-get upgrade -o Dir::Etc::SourceList=/etc/apt/security.sources.list. Result: a bunch of packages were upgraded and apt-check now, at last, shows "0" pending security upgrades. Still no idea what the supposedly crucial package was, or how to avoid this situation in future. Sigh.

Yet another update. Still an issue in LTS 20:

$ sudo apt update
// OK
$ /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check --human-readable
254 updates can be applied immediately.
38 of these updates are standard security updates.
$ sudo unattended-upgrade -vvv
// some stale kernels autoremoved
No packages found that can be upgraded unattended and no pending auto-removals
$ /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check --human-readable
254 updates can be applied immediately.
38 of these updates are standard security updates.

Naturally the previous hacky solution got overwritten at some point and I don't feel like putting it back. Result: more missing "security updates" than ever, on a standard LTS. All this is not very reassuring, frankly.

I'm trying to do something which seems obvious but nobody else seems to be doing. I want to keep my home directory on an encrypted USB drive, to be plugged and unplugged "on top of" a vanilla home directory on a vanilla Ubuntu installation.

It does work, sort of. My current workflow:

1. At login screen, do ctrl+alt+f2 to new TTY. Log in as root (having set root password to allow this). Mount encryped volume at /home/me
2. Back at TTY7, log in as me and work from correctly mounted home
3. Log out to login screen, ctrl+alt+f2 back to terminal, log in as root and unmount /home/me

But at step 3, on trying to unmount my home directory I get Device busy, and doing an lsof reveals hundreds of processes using it. It seems this is because Ubuntu does not log you out when you "Log out" to the login screen. So instead I am just shutting down directly, not unmounting first. Seems not very clean.

NB: I have a hardware issue which makes my machine unusable if I modify the grub config to boot to a shell prompt. And anyway, that is supposedly not the Ubuntu way.

But there has to be a better way to do this. An idea?

How can I trigger a script to be run when an always connected drive is mounted?

I have tried udev, specifically placing a rule 99-local.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d:

KERNEL=="mmcblk0",ACTION=="mount",RUN+="/path/to/script.sh"

And reloading the rules. But the script does not run when the drive is mounted.

Note that the drive is an SD card, hence the mmcblk0 block device name. It is not a USB drive and is not being hotplugged.

I would like to keep the US English locale setting and Qwerty layout, but change the language of the dictionary used for autocorrection in the Messaging app.

Possible, and if so how?

In Terminal app, as default user phablet I am doing su and getting Authentication failure for everything.

As per previous suggestions I have tried ubuntu, phablet, an empty password, and the current device PIN, all without success. I entered the PIN as the device Passphrase instead (in Lock security) and tried that, without success.

Ideas?

Doing an inotifywait to watch a directory, and trying to exclude all subdirectories from being watched while not excluding the files.

inotifywait -r -q --exclude <pattern> dir/

What to put in <pattern>? Manual for inotifywait specifies:

--exclude <pattern>
Do not process any events whose filename matches the specified POSIX extended regular expression, case sensitive.

There's no -type flag like in find. I've tried (^/) but that seems to exclude everything.

Help appreciated.

I have a backup script which requires user interaction. I would like to schedule it to run, say, once a week.

The constraints are that (1) the computer boots straight into Gnome and is turned off daily, (2) the user must be able to opt out of running the script and see any script output on the screen.

I understand that Gnome Scheduler uses anacron for weekly cron jobs, and that missed jobs are run on startup. But that's no use if the job requires a terminal window for user confirmation, because the script will run before Gnome starts.

Gnome, of course, has Startup Applications, for programs to be run on startup. But that's only so helpful, since I don't want my script running at every startup.

A solution?