[Bug 1943189] Re: "cannot refresh whilst network offline" bug

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

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

** Changed in: packagekit (Ubuntu Hirsute)
       Status: New => Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1943189

Title:
  "cannot refresh whilst network offline" bug

Status in packagekit package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in packagekit source package in Focal:
  Confirmed
Status in packagekit source package in Hirsute:
  Confirmed
Status in packagekit source package in Impish:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  [Impact]

  In Ubuntu Impish, an issue has been noted in regards to refreshing
  packages in Plasma Discover for upgrade or installation. An error
  appears upon initialization of the Discover interface:

  "cannot refresh whilst network offline"

  This will happen regardless of if a system is online or not.

  I identified a race condition in which this is occurring on systems
  where packagekitd is initialized before the network service is online.
  This was a relatively easy fix and required adding one line to the
  packagekit.service file:

  Wants=network-online.target

  This ensures that packagekitd is not initialized prior to being
  online. If the 90 second deadline isn't met, then packagekitd will
  simply not start as a background process until the user connects to
  the network and initializes it via a graphical utility, such as with
  GNOME Software or Plasma Discover, both of which initialize
  packagekitd on a user level.

  The attached patch will easily apply the fix via normal Debian
  packaging methods.

  [Test Plan]

   * Install Kubuntu or Ubuntu Studio

   * While connected to network, Run Discover

   * Discover will complain about "cannot refresh whilst offline", which
  is being communicated from PackageKit. All functionality in Discover
  is hindered from this point forward. This is due to a hung packagekitd
  process which sees the network offline, even though this is false.

  [Where problems could occur]

   * packagekitd's systemd service will time-out after 90 seconds if
  systemd finds no network, which means any update notifications will
  not automatically start until packagekitd is manually started.
  Luckily, Discover and GNOME Software both attempt to start packagekitd
  for the user when run. I'd consider this to be expected behavior for
  an offline system. The fix is mostly to prevent the false-negative of
  the system being offline when it's really not.

  [Other Info]

   * This fix has been accepted upstream by the PackageKit maintainers
  as a sane workaround for when gio misbehaves or otherwise. It's a
  decent safety net. https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/pull/506

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.10
  Package: packagekit 1.2.2-2ubuntu1 [modified: lib/systemd/system/packagekit.service]
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.13.0-14.14-lowlatency 5.13.1
  Uname: Linux 5.13.0-14-lowlatency x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair nvidia_modeset nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu68
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
  CurrentDesktop: KDE
  Date: Thu Sep  9 16:34:12 2021
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-03-20 (172 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Studio 21.04 "Hirsute Hippo" - Alpha amd64 (20210320)
  SourcePackage: packagekit
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to impish on 2021-06-13 (88 days ago)

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