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

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

I'm not sure I like the idea of 6am..7am local time.

In case of desktops/laptops they might not be on during  that time - we
also do update on boot right?

Many servers and clouds, do not set local timezone, or set it to UTC
explicitely. Ideally we would want to run 6am..7am window based on local
or cloud-region timezone. Because 6am..7am UTC is bad timing for Middle
East / Central Asia / Far East / Oceania.

Also, I thought caribou was working on applying updates on shutdown, or
something like. Or am I confusing things?

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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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