[Bug 1527710] Re: apt-get update triggers asynchronous task

[ChristianEhrhardt]

Eventually the async apt-check is to avoid stalling humans, and there it
makes total sense.

We could think to do something like

function checkit {
   *code of the check*
}

if [[ $- == *i* ]];
then
    checkit &
else
    checkit
fi

That would cause the check to be synchronous (as it was in the past),
but only if it is a non interactive environment read "nobody directly
cares about the sync delay"

Scott, let me know if you - as discussed on IRC in 2016 - could test a
deb with that approach that I'd build for you.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1527710

Title:
  apt-get update triggers asynchronous task

Status in update-notifier package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  I have a work flow (curtin installation) that does something to the affect of:
   mount $DEVICE /target 
   mount --bind /dev /target/dev
   chroot /target apt-get update
   umount /target/dev
   umount /target/

  With xenial, I started having failures on the umount of /target/dev because of open file handles.
  An lsof showed me that /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-updates-available had open file handles on /dev/null and apt-check had handles on /dev/urandom.

  I admit that part of this is my fault, because we do a selective apt-
  get update (only pulling deb sources, not deb-src).  As a result, when
  /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-updates-available there was
  possibly more work to be done then would normally have to be done...
  not sure on that.

  For the record, what we do is in http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~curtin-
  dev/curtin/trunk/view/head:/curtin/util.py#L486 (apt_update method).

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
  Package: update-notifier-common 3.164
  ProcVersionSignature: User Name 4.3.0-2.11-generic 4.3.0
  Uname: Linux 4.3.0-2-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.19.3-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Fri Dec 18 18:02:41 2015
  Ec2AMI: ami-0000072f
  Ec2AMIManifest: FIXME
  Ec2AvailabilityZone: nova
  Ec2InstanceType: m1.small
  Ec2Kernel: None
  Ec2Ramdisk: None
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm-256color
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: update-notifier
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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