[Bug 691050] Re: Daily cron job doesn't report failures

[Steve Dodd]

** Patch added: "Report exit status to systemd after daily activities"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/691050/+attachment/5598352/+files/apt.systemd.daily.patch

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/691050

Title:
  Daily cron job doesn't report failures

Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: apt

  Hi

  I'm using unattended-upgrades in a lucid vm, setup for security
  updates to be installed automatically.

  I realized recently that this stopped working for some time, but I
  didn't get any error whatsoever: there were available security updates
  when I would launch aptitude, but they would not get installed
  overnight anymore.

  To find out what was going on, I've set APT::Periodic::Verbose 2; in the apt config; I got this output in the next day's cron:
  /etc/cron.daily/apt:
  verbose level 2
  sleeping for 537 seconds
  apt-key net-update (success)
  download updated metadata (error)
  download upgradable (not run)
  unattended-upgrade (not run)
  check_stamp: interval=0
  autoclean (not run)
  aged: ctime <30 and mtime <30 and ctime>2 and mtime>2
  end remove by archive size: size=508 < 512000

  (I found it hard to force a run, there is no flag to e.g. ignore the
  timestamp checks and force this cron job to do what it would do
  nightly; you have to edit it and disable a bunch of tests, but then
  it's not obvious that the right thing is being changed etc.)

  The problem was that one of the APT repository I was tracking had gone away, it had been removed, resulting in apt-get update failing to complete:
  E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

  but this went on unnoticed for weeks.

  I think this cron job should report failures by:
  - outputting something meaningful to stderr when an error condition appears
  - returning with a non-zero exit status when some error condition occurs

  and ideally, it would be possible to run it manually during day, even
  if it ran overnight, perhaps a "force" flag allowing to ignore
  timestamp checks?

  Cheers,

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