Cronjob /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common sends too many e-mail messages

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I tried to debug it, but the coding style of /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts lead me to decide I'll rather uninstall the ttf-mscorefonts-installer after initial system setup. I'll uninstall it now and expect the mail messages will end then.

PS: Uninstalling the installer also removed the fonts from
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts , so make backup
before you uninstall it.

The processing message actually comes from update-notifier-common which is provided by update-notifier.

I suggest removing the print() call that outputs the message in question from /usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader. This script isn’t meant to be run interactively anyway.

Confirmed also have this bug on a 16.04 system. Installed the <a href="https://packages.debian.org/sid/all/ttf-mscorefonts-installer/download">Debian package</a> as a fix as per recommendation.

The core issue is that ttf-mscorefonts-installer files are repeatedly failing to download, so you are repeatedly emailed about it. (The email sure could be improved.)

update-notifier handles the downloads, but the actual downloads are performed by apt-helper, and that program has trouble following redirects with spaces in the URL and handling files that already exist on the target machine.

Have a look at the following bug report about that: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/1655431

That's not actually the core issue at this point. The core issue at this point is that the end-user license hasn't been accepted and there's no way to accept it. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1655431/comments/12 .

That is not the core issue either. I, for example, have declined to accept the license on purpose (I dislike the fonts and I prefer them not to be installed even if some package suggests this one as a dependency), yet I get the message.

As I said above, both print() statements in the /usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader script make no sense unless the script is run interactively.

Attaching a patch.

The attachment "upd-not-shut-up.patch" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

Am also experiencing this from about 30 Ubuntu 16.04 machines in our office. We get very regular e-mails that the flash plugin was updated, and there's no "normal" way to silence them. As a workaround, we change /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common to send its output to `/dev/null`, but this will be rolled back with an change of update-notifier.

I think that the last patch, posted by Roman Odaisky, will fix part of the issue. However, for the Flash player, at some point, `apt` is called which also produces output that is e-mailed in cron. It might be best to just change the cronjob to redirect its output (perhaps also stderr) to some log file.

Here's some example output from the cronjob regarding installation of the flash plugin:

flashplugin-installer: processing...
flashplugin-installer: downloading http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_20180206.1.orig.tar.gz
Get:1 http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_20180206.1.orig.tar.gz [30,5 MB]
Fetched 30,5 MB in 6s (4798 kB/s)
W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/adobe-flashplugin_20180206.1.orig.tar.gz' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)
Installing from local file /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/adobe-flashplugin_20180206.1.orig.tar.gz
Flash Plugin installed.

Still see it on 17.10.

Sorry, wrong version, it is 16.04.4, but the curious thing is that this happens only on one (the latest installed one a month ago, the other 7 have months online) of 8 16.04 servers, the other 7 don't send these notifications. What could be different between servers ?

Roman: I think that installing an installer package and not accepting its license is not a valid combination. Either accept the license or remove the installer package. There's no point having an installer package installed and not accepting its license.

Sjors: Having notifications about scripts that actually download anything seems useful to me. That said, you can of course also directly install the adobe-flashplugin package from the partner repo instead.

I can see the argument for not printing "processing" lines if we don't actually do anything; but if we actually do anything, I think we should print that - I'd want to know if third-party files are downloaded and installed somewhere in my system.

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 3.192.5

---------------
update-notifier (3.192.5) cosmic; urgency=medium

  * Fix PEP8 errors

update-notifier (3.192.4) cosmic; urgency=medium

  * package-data-downloader: Only print processing messages if we
    should download stuff, or if an expected exception occured
    (LP: #1641671)

 -- Julian Andres Klode <email address hidden> Tue, 29 May 2018 09:38:23 +0200

Julian - That sounds fair. Thanks for your solution!

During SRU verification, could you please also verify the code path that leads to "print_maybe("%s: Error processing!" % (relfile))"?

Hello Jonathan, or anyone else affected,

Accepted update-notifier into bionic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/3.192.1.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-bionic to verification-done-bionic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-bionic. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Hello Jonathan, or anyone else affected,

Accepted update-notifier into artful-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/3.186.3 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-artful to verification-done-artful. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-artful. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Hello Jonathan, or anyone else affected,

Accepted update-notifier into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/3.168.9 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

bionic (3.192.1->3.192.1.1) validated OK:

+ lxc launch -e ubuntu:bionic lp1641671-bionic
Creating lp1641671-bionic
Starting lp1641671-bionic
+ lxc exec lp1641671-bionic -- sh -c 'add-apt-repository multiverse && sleep 10 && apt-get update && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -q -y install ttf-mscorefonts-installer'
+ lxc exec lp1641671-bionic -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy update-notifier-common | grep Installed && /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common'
  Installed: 3.192.1
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...
+ lxc exec lp1641671-bionic -- sh -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-proposed main >> /etc/apt/sources.list && apt-get update && apt-get install update-notifier-common'
dpkg-preconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: No such file or directory
+ lxc exec lp1641671-bionic -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy update-notifier-common | grep Installed && /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common'
  Installed: 3.192.1.1
+ lxc stop lp1641671-bionic

artful (3.186.2 -> 3.186.3) and xenial (3.168.8->3.189.9) too

$ bash rep artful
+ lxc launch -e ubuntu:artful lp1641671-artful
Creating lp1641671-artful
Starting lp1641671-artful
+ lxc exec lp1641671-artful -- sh -c 'add-apt-repository multiverse && sleep 10 && apt-get update && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -q -y install ttf-mscorefonts-installer'
+ lxc exec lp1641671-artful -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy update-notifier-common | grep Installed && /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common'
  Installed: 3.186.2
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...
+ lxc exec lp1641671-artful -- sh -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful-proposed main >> /etc/apt/sources.list && apt-get update && apt-get install update-notifier-common'
dpkg-preconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: No such file or directory
+ lxc exec lp1641671-artful -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy update-notifier-common | grep Installed && /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common'
  Installed: 3.186.3
+ lxc stop lp1641671-artful
$ bash rep xenial
+ lxc launch -e ubuntu:xenial lp1641671-xenial
Creating lp1641671-xenial
Starting lp1641671-xenial
+ lxc exec lp1641671-xenial -- sh -c 'add-apt-repository multiverse && sleep 10 && apt-get update && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -q -y install ttf-mscorefonts-installer'
+ lxc exec lp1641671-xenial -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy update-notifier-common | grep Installed && /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common'
  Installed: 3.168.8
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...
+ lxc exec lp1641671-xenial -- sh -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-proposed main >> /etc/apt/sources.list && apt-get update && apt-get install update-notifier-common'
dpkg-preconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: No such file or directory
+ lxc exec lp1641671-xenial -- sh -c 'apt-cache policy update-notifier-common | grep Installed && /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common'
  Installed: 3.168.9
+ lxc stop lp1641671-xenial

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 3.192.1.1

---------------
update-notifier (3.192.1.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * package-data-downloader: Only print processing messages if we
    should download stuff, or if an expected exception occured
    (LP: #1641671)

 -- Julian Andres Klode <email address hidden> Mon, 18 Jun 2018 16:11:40 +0200

The verification of the Stable Release Update for update-notifier has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 3.186.3

---------------
update-notifier (3.186.3) artful; urgency=medium

  * package-data-downloader: Only print processing messages if we
    should download stuff, or if an expected exception occured
    (LP: #1641671)

 -- Julian Andres Klode <email address hidden> Mon, 18 Jun 2018 16:40:54 +0200

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 3.168.9

---------------
update-notifier (3.168.9) xenial; urgency=medium

  * package-data-downloader: Only print processing messages if we
    should download stuff, or if an expected exception occured
    (LP: #1641671)

 -- Julian Andres Klode <email address hidden> Mon, 18 Jun 2018 16:40:54 +0200