[SRU to impish] Mitigate KNS load on KDE servers

Bug #1962449 reported by Rik Mills
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
plasma-discover (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Impish
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

See: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/distributions/2022-February/001140.html

Dear distributors,
In the last few days, we have been looking into mitigating the impact
of Discover against certain KDE web services.

Some of the problems can be addressed in the service itself but not
them entirely, so it would be useful if the following changes were
backported into your own packaging. We have already included it in our
stable branches but on the distributions that ship unsupported
versions of our software it would be useful you can apply these
patches.

https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/knewstuff/-/commit/c8165b7a0d622e318b3353ccf257a8f229dd12c9
https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/knewstuff/-/commit/e1c6f2bf383876a31cd3e3f9e6edcaa19dc0a7dd

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/b85cf34298c274b5f16cb6c2aead7b87f0dabbb8
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/commit/6257e21c313e21afd80d101d24c78d66621236b1

If you feel unsure about the patch on a specific branch, feel free to
contact me here or in private and I will backport it if necessary.

Impact]

 * Effectively a DDOS on some KDE servers that were not intended to take this traffic

[Test Plan]

 * Test that Discover functions normally with the changes. e.g. KNS, packagekit, snap backends work as intended.

[Where problems could occur]

 * Could fail to fetch resources, crash etc. It will need to be tested with a reasonable sample of these that this does not happen.

Rik Mills (rikmills)
Changed in plasma-discover (Ubuntu Impish):
status: New → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100) wrote : Please test proposed package

Hello Rik, or anyone else affected,

Accepted plasma-discover into impish-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plasma-discover/5.22.5-0ubuntu1.1 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, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-impish to verification-done-impish. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-impish. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

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

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

Changed in plasma-discover (Ubuntu Impish):
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
tags: added: verification-needed verification-needed-impish
Revision history for this message
Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100) wrote :

Is there a way to check if the DDoS is fixed by this upload? Maybe by looking at some debug output? Can we add some test case for it into the verification?

Revision history for this message
Rik Mills (rikmills) wrote : Re: [Bug 1962449] Re: [SRU to impish] Mitigate KNS load on KDE servers

On 28/02/2022 13:34, Łukasz Zemczak wrote:
> Is there a way to check if the DDoS is fixed by this upload? Maybe by
> looking at some debug output? Can we add some test case for it into the
> verification?

I will ask the plasma-discover main developer

Revision history for this message
Marco Parillo (marco-parillo) wrote :

In a fresh VM, Discover successfully applied all the updates since October, and, after rebooting, I successfully installed an application.

Revision history for this message
Rik Mills (rikmills) wrote :

On 28/02/2022 13:34, Łukasz Zemczak wrote:
> Is there a way to check if the DDoS is fixed by this upload? Maybe by
> looking at some debug output? Can we add some test case for it into the
> verification?

The KDE dev seems stumped for a test case, but would be pleased to have
one if we work one out. :/

Revision history for this message
Rik Mills (rikmills) wrote :

Have spent a fair while poking and prodding the app and its functions. e.g. KNS resource fetch and install, pkgkit, snap etc. Have not noticed any regressions (over the nitpicks I already have with discover :P).

Rik Mills (rikmills)
tags: added: verification-done verification-done-impish
removed: verification-needed verification-needed-impish
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package plasma-discover - 5.22.5-0ubuntu1.1

---------------
plasma-discover (5.22.5-0ubuntu1.1) impish; urgency=medium

  * Add upstream patch requested to mitigate KDE server loads.
    (LP: #1962449)
    - d/p/upstream_notifier-dont-trigger-updates-too-often.patch

 -- Rik Mills <email address hidden> Mon, 28 Feb 2022 08:07:11 +0000

Changed in plasma-discover (Ubuntu Impish):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100) wrote : Update Released

The verification of the Stable Release Update for plasma-discover has completed successfully and the package is now being 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.

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