undefined | Better HN

0 pointsptsneves10mo ago0 comments

> It does default to installing security updates automatically. However, this is completely configurable.

Man, but have you personally tried to disable it?

Did you stop apt-daily.service apt-daily.time apt-daily-upgrade.service and apt-daily.timer? Did you repeat the same but masking and disabling those services. Don't forget to repeat that for unatended-upgrades.service. Even after that whenever our CI fails an apt-get we have a pstree output to figure out what other dark pattern canonical came up with.

This whole debacle made me consider RedHat for my next install, and I use Ubuntu for almost 2 decades. It became unreliable in servers.

Dont get me started on the lack of security updates on "multiverse" packages which starts to include more and more packages and thus LTS means less and less. This is not innocent but so you buy Ubuntu One.

0 comments

bArray10mo ago

Their answer will be "just make your server robust to restarts bro", not really understanding the fact that some stuff simply cannot be restarted. We have Ubuntu desktop running a robot arm (not our choice of OS, but the manufacturer). Mid-operation snap decides to kill the robot that would otherwise be happy operating away and sending stats to the cloud.

I'm personally moving to Debian. It's 99% how Ubuntu used to be and most Ubuntu stuff is just a .deb that is relatively compatible.

rlpb10mo ago

> Man, but have you personally tried to disable it?

Sure. It's just a one line change in the configuration file (/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades). Or, if you're doing a mass deployment, just don't install the unattended-upgrades package.

> figure out what other dark pattern canonical came up with

The mechanism is inherited from Debian. It isn't Canonical's architecture.

If you want to hack internals to do things in a more complicated way, then that's up to you, but you can't then complain that it's unnecessarily complicated.

ptsnevesOP10mo ago

> Sure. It's just a one line change in the configuration file (/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades). Or, if you're doing a mass deployment, just don't install the unattended-upgrades package.

That answer shows you have not seen that pattern fail.When that fails or is overwritten by an update, remember my comment.

Ironically you just added another way to configure a simple thing, proving my point.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse