thinks that package information is 8 days old even after updating an hour ago (aptitude does not write update-stamp)

What is the output of:
$ ls -l /var/lib/apt/periodic
?

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-10-20 09:08 download-upgradeable-stamp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-10-20 09:00 update-stamp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-10-20 09:00 update-success-stamp

They are all empty.

i have the same error/warning/bug

total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-10-11 07:55 update-stamp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-10-12 06:47 update-success-stamp

@Jedasothi: thanks - this is puzzling, the timestamps on the file look correct. What version of update-manager is that? Karmic should automatically update the text.

@_dan_: it appears that in your case this is correct and the update is really a couple of days old. There was a bug in the automatic update script some days ago, could you please check what version of apt you are using?

Hm, sorry for the question about the version. Its Package: update-manager 1:0.126.4 so that should be all right. If you close and open update-manager, does it still show the wrong time information? Or does that fix it?

@Michael Vogt its not right, i set the apt to check daily plus i manually updated the package information, i tried it with cli apt and with the update-manager gui "check" button, it refreshed the information, installed updates, but i still get the warning "package information is old ..." even tho i manually updated the information 1 few seconds ago.
Closing and opening does not help, nor does rebooting.

my apt version is: 0.7.23.1ubuntu2
my update-manager version is: 1:0.126.5

Previously, when closing the main window and re opening it, it would still show outdated information. It may be that it was running in the 'background' and shown in the panel and not shut down. I no longer recall.

Right now, i do not have it start upon login. Starting it manually, it shows 'updated 3 days ago' which is probably the last time i used update-manager. The last update via aptitude was an hour or few ago, so i guess tracking updates by other programs is unimplemented.

Here is a conjecture: i had aptitude running and then update-manager attempted update but could not due to resources being locked. After closing Aptitude, update-manager had some invalid state information which prevented it from operating properly.

It wont show updated usage information even when i use update-manager since i use it twice a day usually.
Has nothing to do with apt or aptitude
Update-manager currently shows 14 days old package information when in fact it is seconds old.

Thanks for the replies.

update-manager checks for the last update time via the file:

/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp

That is written every time a apt-get update/aptitude update/update-manager check update *without* any errors was done. A error can be e.g. unreachable third party repository, no network connectivity etc. If you see incorrect information like above, please check the timestamp of that file and check if apt-get update (on a terminal) runs without errors or warnings. If both is the case, then there is a bug.

I need to correct myself, a "aptitude update" does not update the update-success-stamp, its implementing the fetching on its own, not using the ListUpdate method that apt-get and all python-apt apps are using.

I have errors from third party repos, so that explains my issue

So, if there were any error produced in updating one of the repositories, the results would be as described:

update-manager would correctly find and install updates, but not update the time stamp and so continuously report that updating is needed?

I no longer recall, but it could be that I had a repository at that time which produced a non-fatal error.
Around that time I had a local repository which I think produced the error that signatures or checksums could not be verified. I would expect myself to disable that repo & try the update again, but perhaps I did not. It would perfectly explain the symptoms and seems the most likely explanation to me.

I am also seeing this issue in Lucid Lynx (Alpha 3) in a Virtual Box VM.

Could it be significant that my update system is:

aptitude update
aptitude -d -y dist-upgrade

Then run update-manager via the GUI to actually install the packages that the command lines above?

Perhaps aptitude is not setting the flag because it did not actually install anything.

Aptitude 0.6.6-1 has been released, which should fix this bug.

This bug was fixed in the package aptitude - 0.6.6-1ubuntu1

---------------
aptitude (0.6.6-1ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * Resynchronise with Debian. Remaining changes:
    - debian/05aptitude: Never autoremove kernels.
    - Drop aptitude-doc to Suggests.
    - 03_branding: Ubuntu branding.
    - 04_changelog: Take changelogs from changelogs.ubuntu.com.
    - 11_ubuntu_uses_sudo: Fix status line of 'Become root' menu entry to
      not refer to su.
    - 12_point_manpage_to_doc_package: Point Finnish manpage to the correct
      place for further info.
    - 14_html2text_preferred: Switch back to html2text in favor of elinks,
      since html2text is in main and elinks isn't.
    - no-google-mock: Don't use google-mock as it and libgtest-dev are in
      universe.

aptitude (0.6.6-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.

    - Basic multi-arch support. See NEWS for details.

      + add search terms ?architecture and ?multiarch;
      + add grouping policy 'architecture';

      (Closes: #659079, #661744)
      (LP: #454941, #845136, #884945, #904486)

    - Apply patch from Ubuntu to fix build -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 errors.
      Thanks to Colin Watson and Michael Vogt (Closes: #497539)

    - Remove GTK+ menu entry for minesweeper. (Closes: #552522)

    - Hack to prevent debug messages dumping to the screen (Closes: #651748)

    - Fix '?action(upgrade)' and others (were finding kept
      packages instead). Thanks to 'Rogier' for the patch (Closes: #603862)

    - List update errors are reported. (Closes: #451137)

    - List update now runs APT::Update hooks. (Closes: #476399)

    - Actually silence progress messages with '-q2'. (Closes: #141719)

    - Fix various locking issues:

      + '[auto]clean' locks /var/cache/apt/archives;
      + 'update' locks /var/lib/apt/lists; (Closes: #653479)

    - Fix 'priority' cost level in resolver. The values should
      have been negated but were not. Thanks to Modestas Vainius
      for this one. (Closes: #608786)

    - Fix some help and prompt strings which wrongly included
      localized names for commands such as 'why'. (Closes: #486615)

    - Change ordering of top-level sections to match the order
      in aptitude::Sections::Top-Sections. The default order
      is now: main, contrib, non-free. (Closes: #181997)

    - Improve error messages when parsing grouping policies to
      use the user-visible names, rather than the internal
      names. (Closes: #231595)

    - Change default width of %D, %I, %o, and %Z. Thanks to
      Michał Kułach for this one. (Closes: #599209) (LP: #741417)

    - Change default width of %V, %v to 14. This greatly increases the
      number of versions which will display completely. (Closes: #624542)

    - 'versions' now groups it's results by 'package:arch' instead of
      'package'.

    - Cleared up grouping, sorting policy error messages.
      (Closes: #231595)

    - Minor correction to the user's manual. (Closes: #365485)

    - Translation updates:

      + Brazilian Portuguese (Closes: #483964)
      + Hungarian (Closes: #592468)
      + Polish (Closes: #659803)
      + Russian (Closes: #662624)

  * No longer suppl...