[Bug 1783023] Re: Software Updater is sometimes blank when there are ONLY phased updates and auto-removable kernels

[Tammara Garland]

Discovered today that the thread I posted to on prior days was a
duplicate to this thread, so now I'm updating here. This bug with my
system first appeared August 9th. Yesterday I decided to go ahead and
install whatever updates were there (even though I could not see 'what'
the updates were since the box was blank). This was what occurred
yesterday with my system while running the updater:

16.04.5 LTS xenial

The 'software updater' continued to show only the blank white box, but
indicated there was updates to install. I decided to go ahead and run it
through the installation process. (See attached image).

With the plain white box there was no way to see 'what' the updates
would be. But, after selecting 'install', the Terminal Emulator opened
and showed the installation progress as it normally does.

When the update was complete the message, "The Software on This Computer
is Up to Date" also came up as normal. So the only bug appears to be
just the blank white box not revealing 'what' the updates are.

Now for today: I just ran the Software Updater and it is now functioning
properly - showing what the available updates are in the box as it
should - not just a blank white box as before, so for me it seems to
have been resolved - at least for now! Thanks!



** Attachment added: "Software Updater Blank White Box"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/1783023/+attachment/5175536/+files/InstallerBroke.png

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1783023

Title:
  Software Updater is sometimes blank when there are ONLY phased updates
  and auto-removable kernels

Status in update-manager package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in update-manager source package in Xenial:
  Confirmed
Status in update-manager source package in Bionic:
  Confirmed
Status in update-manager source package in Cosmic:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Environment:

  $ lsb_release -rd
  Description:    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
  Release:        18.04

  $ apt-cache policy update-manager
  update-manager:
    Installed: 1:18.04.11.3
    Candidate: 1:18.04.11.3
    Version table:
   *** 1:18.04.11.3 500
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 Packages
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main i386 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
       1:18.04.11 500
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main i386 Packages

  
  Description:

  When Software Updater finds ONLY phased updates and auto-removable
  kernels, sometimes it comes up blank.  i.e. it says "Updated software
  is available for this computer", but the list of available updates
  contains nothing.  It does say the size of how much data will be
  downloaded.  But no details of what this download is or what changes
  will be made if I click Install Now.

  This occurred most recently on 21 July, when I had one auto-removable
  kernel and the following updates were available in principle -

  $ apt list --upgradable
  Listing... Done
  libnss-systemd/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]
  libpam-systemd/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]
  libsystemd0/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]
  libudev1/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]
  systemd/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]
  systemd-sysv/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]
  udev/bionic-updates 237-3ubuntu10.2 amd64 [upgradable from: 237-3ubuntu10]

  
  Expected results:

  Depending on whether I "should" receive the avilable phased updates or
  not, I would have expected that...

  A) ... if I should have received some of the available phased updates,
  Software Updater should present them to me, and offer to remove the
  auto-removable kernels.

  B) ... if I should not receive any of the available phased updates yet, Software Updater should either
    i) only offer to remove the auto-removable kernels, OR
    ii) just say "The software on this computer is up to date."

  
  ubuntuforums thread (which includes a screenshot):
  https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2394240

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