[Solved] package-update-notifier does not showupdates

[peer]

In debian 10 xfce I installed the package-update-notifier. I can see a icon on the panel but it does not show any updates. When I run the package updater from within the menu (menu->system->package updater) I can see that here is one update available.

When I click on the package-update-notifier icon I can change the check preference form 'daily' to 'twice a day' ... to 'always'. But even in the setting 'always' it does not see any updates.

Should I do something extra to make the icon show available updates????

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I installed the package-update-notifier

I cannot find any such package in Debian buster: https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... ection=all

What exactly did you install?

[peer]

sorry, wrong package name

the package is: package-update-indicator 2.0-1

https://packages.debian.org/search?suit ... -indicator

[Head_on_a_Stick]

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=142598

Please search the boards before posting.

[peer]

did the search but did not find working solutions there.

At this moment I cannot check because there are no updates available on my pc

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Did you

set the Preferences for "Refresh Cache Always"

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=702352#p702352

[peer]

yes, I did that. After installing the preference setting was 'daily'. First I changed this to 'twice a day' and then to 'always'. Then I rebooted and waited a while but no notification of updates.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

yes, I did that

Please explicitly list all of the steps taken to help avoid wasting the time and effort of potential helpers.

I have no idea how to make the update notifier work, sorry. For the family laptop I just enable unattended upgrades, which renders update notifiers superfluous. Have you considered that?

[peer]

all my steps are:
0 debian 10 xfce fresh install (in qemu/kvm)
1 installed 'package-update-indicator''. Synaptic installed extra packages f.e. gnome-packagekit.
After installing there was an icon on the panel. When I right- clicked on the icon I saw greyed out option: 'install updates' and a preference option.
2. I changed the preference 'refresh cache daily' to the 'refresh cache twice a day' and later to 'refresh cache daily'
After reboot the icon does not change in color (I think it should be red when there are updates available) even after a few minutes.

[zorzi]

Nothing to worry about. It probably means that there are no updates available for the moment.

In package-update-indicator preferences, check that the install command field is not empty.

It must contains "gpk-update-viewer" to launch gnome-packagekit updater when clicking "install updates".

Since I do not want gnome dependencies with my xfce, I prefer using synaptic to manage updates. I fill the package-update-indicator instal command with "synaptic-pkexec --upgrade-mode"

EDIT: I remove unattented-upgrades package because I do not want automatic upgrades.

[peer]

@Zorzi,
thanks for your reply.
The command field was empty. I entered the first command: "gpk-update-viewer". After reboot still the same situation. The icon does not change color and the option "install update"is grayed out.

I clicked at menu->System->Package Updater. The gpk-update-viewer opened and it did not show any updates.
Then I ran 'sudo apt update' in the terminal to chack and it found two updates.
After that I ran gpk-update-viewer again and it also found two updates. Here seems to be a problem.

I changed the command in the preferences to /usr/bin/gpk-update-viewer and rebooted. The icon still does not change color, there is no notifying of updates and the option "install updates'is grayed out.

So I think there is something wrong with the search for updates.

[zorzi]

Maybe this can help.

With my system, I had removed unattented-upgrades package to avoid automatic updates. But updates were still automatically downloaded (but not installed).

So I had to edit: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

and change the line:

APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";

to:

APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";

[peer]

unfortunately does not work for me
unattented-upgrades was installed so I removed it
but the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic does not exits

[peer]

appearrantly it is a known bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=928814
On this page I found a workaround. I installed the dummy package pk-update-icon and after a reboot the update-indicator worked and I could launch the installer (which I also changed to synaptic)

[zorzi]

Happy you could solved the issue.