Stop google Chrome cron job?

[Stuart McGraw]

On 5/9/23 14:54, Colin Law wrote:
> On Tue, 9 May 2023 at 18:56, Stuart McGraw <smcg4191 at mtneva.com> wrote:
>>
>> I installed Google Chrome on my Ubuntu-22.04 system from Google's PPA.  I discovered that it created a cron.daily job that runs a script it owns.  (/etc/cron.daily now contains a symlink to /opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome.)   Since I find this kind of behind-ones-back thing unacceptable (a euphemism), I removed the link from /etc/daily.cron/.  The next day it was back.  Does anyone know with what or how Google is replacing the cron job?  Is my PC now Pwned by Google?
> 
> It appears to be well commented and does not appear to do anything
> untowards.  The description at the top says
> 
> # It creates the repository configuration file for package updates, and it
> # monitors that config to see if it has been disabled by the overly aggressive
> # distro upgrade process (e.g.  intrepid -> jaunty). When this situation is
> # detected, the respository will be re-enabled. If the respository is disabled
> # for any other reason, this won't re-enable it.
> 
> In addition it tells you how to disable the operation if you want to.
> 
> Also it says that it is copyright of the Chromium authors, which I
> think is the open source bit of Chrome rather than Chrome specific. No
> doubt someone will correct me if I am wrong there.

I am not so concerned about malevolence but about network stuff running
outside my control.  I live in the third world (rural U.S.) and my internet
connection is 1Mb/s (that's bit, not byte) with a monthly quota.  I hate
to mention the "s" word but the first thing I do when installing Ubuntu is
to kill the snapd process and mask the service.  I really need control over
when updates run.

I realize that the cronjob is "fixing" the repo information, not controlling
when updates happen, but that "fixing" seemed to involving recreating a
cronjob, automatically, even when it had been explicitly removed.  That was
the problem for me.

BUT, I checked again last night and the job stayed removed.  Not sure
what happened.  Perhaps in messing around I may have run a upgrade without
recalling it and that recreates the cronjob?  It's created in the post-
install script but I don't know if that's run on every upgrade.  I am not
as concerned if I did something that caused its recreation than if there
is something continuously or repeatedly in background recreating it.  But
even so, I'll still need to stop upgrades from reincarnating it.  I guess
some of the methods that have been used for resolv.conf would work.

Thanks for the feedback all.  Unless I see it reappear on its own again my
immediate paranoia is over. :-)