Unable to apply changes to preferences in Update Manager
 

Hi everyone,

I'm running Mint 17 with a Plasma 5 desktop. This afternoon I saw the icon for Update Manager had disappeared from the system tray in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. I hadn't done anything which would cause this - I was working on an LO Calc spreadsheet at the time. I opened Update Manager from the menu and went to Edit, Preferences and the Icons tab. All the icon boxes showed a red cross. I selected icons for each one from my Pictures folder and clicked on apply. I closed the preferences form and rebooted but when I went back into the icons tab of the preferences form, the change I had made hadn't been applied. I tried this several times, always with the same result. I tried changing preferences in other tabs and the same thing happened. The "apply" button on the preferences form appears not to be working. I went into package manager and reinstalled MintUpdate but that didn't fix it so then I removed MintUpdate completely, rebooted, re-installed MintUpdate and rebooted again. None of it worked. For some reason I am unable to change the Preferences in MintUpdate. Anyone else come across this and found a solution?

Did you try making these changes as root or using sudo? System-wide changes to something like Update Manager usually require special permissions.
jdk

Thanks for the taking the time to reply jdkaye.
All I did was open Update Manager and go to Edit Preferences. This is what I did when I first installed Linux to stop Update Manager installing potentially dangerous packages. On that occasion the change to preferences was successful. I have tried changing that tab in preferences again but now that change won't apply either. Is there another step I have to take to change Update Manager preferences?

It's possible something in your home folder is corrupted or had it's permissions changed by accident. The easiest way to check is to create a new user and see if the problem still exists when logged into the new account. You can always delete the new account when finished.

Sorry but I don't understand what you did. You say you changed the preferences of the update manager. You changed them from what to what?

Try opening a terminal and type in these two commands.
That should tell you what your problem is. If there is no problem it will update your system.
jdk

Hi jdk,

I ran both commands. They completed with no errors but the problem persists.

The changes to Update Manager preferences I referred to in my earlier post go back to when I first installed Linux. I followed this advice which I found on a tips and tweaks website:

Improve Update Manager
1.2. The settings of Update Manager need to be improved. You can do that as follows:
Enable security updates for level 4 and 5
1.2.1. Security updates of level 4 and 5, are being shown by default. But they're not enabled by default. It's best to change that like this:
Menu button - Administration - Update Manager
Panel Update Manager: Edit - Preferences
Tab Levels (first tab): tick:
Always select and trust security updates
See the attached screenshot.

I was able to make this change with no trouble. I did not alter the preferences on update manager again until I noticed the shield icon had disappeared.

I couldn't see where Update Manager got its original icons from so I downloaded some from the web and saved them to my documents folder.

I went to Edit Preferences in Update Manager and, from the icons tab, navigated to the icons I had downloaded. Update Manager uses 6 icons to indicate its different states. I selected all 6 icons in tun, clicked on Apply then closed the preferences box and Update Manager.

When I re-opened Update Manager and went back to preferences, the shield icons had disappeared, it was as if I had never made the change.

To see whether this was just a problem with shields and icons, I went back to the Levels tab and unchecked "Always select and trust security updates". I clicked on apply and closed the preferences box then closed update manager. When I re-opened update manager and went back to the preferences, the check against "Always select and trust security updates" had re-appeared, again the change I had made had not been applied.

This appears to be a problem only with applying changes to preferences in update manager. If I go into Update Manager from the menu it is working properly. There is a gap on my system tray where the update manager icon used to be, if I click in that gap, Update Manager opens.

There is another suggestion on this thread that something in my home folder may have been corrupted. That seems a reasonable suggestion so I will take the advice and create a new user to see if that fixes the issue. I will reply when I have done so.

Sorry but what problem? You seem to be able to update your system using the usual commands in a terminal. The problems you talk about involve some icons which may or may not appear in your Update Manager. If using the command line gets you the results you want, why bother with an apparently buggy program? If Update Manager doesn't work then don't use it and report the bug to Mint, or am I missing something?
jdk

As far as getting updates goes, the terminal and apg-get will work fine. It would be worth the while to learn the apt-get commands.

Your GUI problems could be caused by a myriad of things. You might end up spending a lot of time trying to get it working. It may be problems with update manager. It may be that KDE plasma is not working correctly with update manager, or the other way around. It may be a graphics driver bug. I am not familiar with using KDE with Ubuntu / Mint. If there is a desktop settings option in your menus, you might take a look at some of the plasma settings.

Looking at the Linux Mint 17 web site, it appears that update manager went through some major changes with this release. If this is a bug, it might be solved by a future update. That is assuming that the people at Linux Mint are aware of it. I would follow jdkaye's advice and report a bug, or at least check the Mint bug site and see if it has already been reported. It can be found at:

Bugs: Linux Mint

Good luck

Issue solved
 

Hi purevw. Thanks for your advice - you were right. When I created a new user Update Manager was working perfectly. I'm now using that new account with, as yet, no problems.