Update notification never appears

Btw, this sounds pretty similar to bug #342017, but that was supposed to be fixed upstream with KDE 4.3, plus the icon doesn't even stay for a few seconds.

The icon itself isn't the notification for package updates. You should get a tray popup for that sort of thing.

So, there's not supposed to be an tray icon if packages are outdated? Anyway, I don't get a popup either.

I also got this problem. I never noticed that there is a notification or icon for update, but if I ran aptitude, I know there is some... The notification didn't work, no matter there should be a icon, or some other persistent thing which should be there until dismiss manually.

I've noticed this too, on both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Kubuntu Karmic.

This is actually quite serious. No notification of security updates means that Kubuntu users most likely won't notice these. Furthermore if an update to kpackagekit is required to get the notification working, the user won't be notified of this either.

There's a lengthy thread about this bug in the forums, which gives some background:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3107644

I can confirm this on Kubuntu 9.10 32-bit.

I put this in the discussion on kubuntu forums, but I'll put it here as well. I don't get notifications either on 9.10. What I've found is if there are updates waiting before a reboot, and then I reboot, I will eventually get a notification. If updates subsequently become available however, I won't get a notification until I reboot again.

OK, Just fixed that locally...

As root, change in /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py , on line 84 :

"if options.security_updates_unattended:"

to :

"if options and options.security_updates_unattended:"

Then kill update notifier, restart it... and icon magically appears
Cheers

Hmmm...

Also, you need to change in the autostart command file to check for *something* to upgrade, otherwise the notifier will apparently never attempt to update anything...
Change in /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier-kde.desktop :

Exec=update-notifier-kde

To

Exec=update-notifier-kde -c

Unlog, come back to KDE... and finally, the update icon finally appears !
Why was this so broken ans so unhandled ?

Cheers

I don't think that's correct. Update notification is supposed to be happening through KPackageKit in KK, not through update-notifier-kde anymore. update-notifier-kde is only kept around for codec install notifications (and similar notifications).

Well, I don't know what's really correct or not, but when I have updates ready, I have this little green icon popping up (now).
And when this is the case, I can see in the processes list : /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/kpackagekitsmarticon

If I do remove a repository (I used ppa), then icon disappears, and I do not see that kpackagekitsmarticon in the processes list...

I did what juulpasgaard and Rominet7777 suggested and the kpackagekit tray icon finally popped up. I haven't tried waiting for real-time updates and seeing if it still pops up, because a few people complain about update-notifier-kde working just at login.

The strange thing is that I remember upgrading to 4.4 RC1 (still no tray icon), then I created a new ~/.kde folder and restarted the session. I clearly remember kpackagekit tray icon working as it should, but when I turned back to my old ~/.kde folder (old KDE settings), I had to use this workaround to make it pop up. Bah!

This seems to be a bug in kpackagekit only.

Fell free to reopen the bug against packagekit if the ouput of "pkcon get-updates" is mallicious.

Cheers!

kpackagekit is still not triggering new updates. I applied Rominet7777's fix to /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py one more time, but update-notifier-kde is a dummy package in maverick, leading to kubuntu-notification-helper, which doesn't seem to have any executables (please, correct me if I'm wrong), so I still have to check whether it works or not.
I will wait for new updates and will keep you updated on the tray icon behaviour.

$ apt-cache policy kpackagekit
kpackagekit:
  Installato: 0.6.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidato: 0.6.2-0ubuntu1
  Tabella versione:
 *** 0.6.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://it.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status