[Bug 1771135] Re: unattended upgrades always fail b/c dpkg status database is always locked

[Felix C. Stegerman]

I'd appreciate some help fixing this since these computers are now not
getting automatic security updates.  And since it's a pretty standard
Ubuntu Desktop installation, I'd be surprised if these were the only
onese affected.

Unfortunately it's a little hard to debug this since it seems to happen
during boot and I don't currently have (physical) access to these
computers.  Happy to help figure this out though.

I could patch the script to also log `ps aux` somewhere to figure out
what's running at the same time, but unfortunately I don't have easy
access to these computers right now; so if someone can reproduce this or
has an idea what the problem (or a workaround/fix) might be I'd
appreciate it.

- Felix

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1771135

Title:
  unattended upgrades always fail b/c dpkg status database is always
  locked

Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in unattended-upgrades package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Hi,

  (Filing this bug against apt since that contains the systemd timers
  and cron job to start unattended-upgrades).

  I'm using unattended-upgrades on several computers.  On the one that
  is on most of the time, updates work as expected.  On the ones that
  are off most of the time, updates are never installed because there is
  always a "dpkg: error: dpkg status database is locked by another
  process".  Running `unattended-upgrade -d` by hand or using aptitude
  works fine.

  I suspect that because these computers are off most of the time, the
  systemd timers for both apt-daily and apt-daily-upgrade are always run
  at the same time during boot and resulting in the dpkg database being
  locked for apt-daily-upgrade.

  I will try disabling the systemd timers and using the cron job instead
  to see if that fixes the problem.

  FYI I also noticed that the cron job will only run when the system is
  on A/C power, whereas the systemd timers do not seem to have any such
  check.

  Thanks.

  - Felix

  ubuntu version: 16.04.4 LTS
  apt version: 1.2.26
  unattended-upgrades version: 0.90ubuntu0.9

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