Debian Squeeze - apt-get running by itself in the background
 

Hi,

I am running Debian Squeeze, apt-get update runs by itself in the background, taking up 100% of one of the two processor cores.

I have kept the system updated.

heres the output of
I have noticed this a couple of times now, i can kill the process and it doesn't show up again ( i haven't noticed it showing up till next reboot).

I don't have update manager to set to automatically install anything, I have set it to "Only notify about available updates".

Help!
thanks in advance

Hi,

If you want to disable update notification:

Applications-> Add/Remove -> Preferences -> Updates Tab

From here you can turn off notification (untick the box next to "Check for updates ever...") or change the type of notification. Choose between Automatic Security updates, automatic downloading, notification only--download/install when you say so.

You can also choose which types of updates (backports, security, etc)

Better to get rid of update manager and notifier:

And run your updates via the terminal

Hi,

Could this be a bug with the update manager?

I do use the Update Manager, its pretty handy. Thank you Caravel for the command line options and thank you prayag for the information.

I have never seen apt-get making updates by itself. What it does it is to update the package lists, it doesnt really upgrade anything. The process is cpu-consuming, but it stops after updating the lists.
I assume it is somewhere in the automated cronjobs that are not part of the update-managers stuff.

I'm having the exact same problem with a fresh Squeeze install
 

Just installed Squeeze using first CD (from a couple weeks ago), and specifying a mirror during install. After booting into the new install, I:

* added myself to sudoers using visudo
* sudo aptitude install gnome-do - this completed fine and gnome-do works.
* about an hour later I came back and tried to sudo aptitude update and this is when the error first popped up.

I searched my processes and find the same apt-get -qq -y update as the OP noted. But also I see that there is a daily apt cron job running, confirming gradinaruvasile's comment:

tblack@tblackld:~$ ps -ef | grep apt
root 1974 1970 0 08:05 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /etc/cron.daily/apt
root 2014 1974 99 08:23 ? 02:24:35 apt-get -qq -y update
root 2017 2014 0 08:23 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/apt/methods/http
root 2018 2014 0 08:23 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/apt/methods/http
root 2019 2014 0 08:23 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/apt/methods/cdrom
root 2022 2014 0 08:23 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/apt/methods/gpgv
tblack 2615 2222 0 10:49 pts/0 00:00:00 grep apt

So, this is a cron job, and it appears to be either taking a ridiculous amount of time to complete, or it is blocked in the background for some reason unbeknownst to us bc the cron script runs apt-get in quiet mode.

I have installed from the same CD onto another machine and didn't have this problem. Not sure what's going on. My software sources look like this:

tblack@tblackld:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Squeeze_ - Official Snapshot i386 CD Binary-1 20101018-04:31]/ squeeze main

deb http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/ squeeze main
deb-src http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main

and my network connection is working and I can ping debian.osuosl.org and security.debian.org.

It's been running for a total of about 6 hours so far. After a few hours, I rebooted the machine, only to find the apt-get job running silently in the background again after about 30 minutes. I am going to give it another hour or so to complete and then I'll kill it.

Let me know if you have any ideas.

...oh, I had one. So I looked in the apt log and found a list of apt operations, many of which occurred during the time I was installing Squeeze. At the end of the list was the "Install: gnome-do" operation. All operations have a Start-Date and an End-Date, so I won't feel so bad killing the current apt-get cron job.

But why don't you just delete the cron-job itself, instead of killing apt-get update every time?

So far, it doesn't happen repeatedly for me. Just the once. But I've only been paying attention for one day. I'm going to wait and see if the cron job hangs again tomorrow.

I removed the apt cron job. like in timblack's case apt would go on running in the background till its killed manually.

I never removed the cron job, and have had no more problems with hanging apt-get processes. It was only a problem for the first 2 days after a fresh install...