[Bug 1615482] Re: apt-daily timer runs at random hours of the day

[Julian Andres Klode]

I guess we should go to something like

OnCalendar=*-*-* 6,18:00
RandomizedDelaySec=1h
AccuracySec=1h

or tie down random and accuracy even more. We could do like 15 min or so
- the cron job used 30 min sleep maximum.

The boot argument with short runtime should be ignored. We can't help
everyone. People are already complaining that the job runs during boot
and want us to delay it during boot. systemd provides no infrastructure
for us to depend on network being available reliably (or well, at all),
so that's not optimal either.

** Bug watch added: github.com/systemd/systemd/issues #5659
   https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5659

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1615482

Title:
  apt-daily timer runs at random hours of the day

Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  apt, from 1.2.10 onwards (ie any version in Xenial, onwards) uses a
  systemd timer instead of a cron.daily job. This is a good thing,
  decoupling apt daily runs from the rest of cron, and ensuring other
  cron.daily jobs are not blocked by up to half an hour by the default
  settings of unattended-upgrades.

  However the policy chosen is to have the apt daily script run at a
  random hour of the day in a wrong headed attempt to reduce server
  load. This has the side effect of running unattended-upgrades at
  random hours of the day — such as business hours — rather than being
  confined to between 6:25am and 6:55am, using the defaults.

  A better policy would be to have the script activate at 6:00am plus an
  interval of 20 minutes at one second intervals reducing the impact of
  timezone population spikes, while still allowing unattended-upgrades
  to run within a predictable interval, before 7am.

  At the very least, some sort of note in the NEWS file detailing the
  new behaviour would be welcome.

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