[Bug 1914278] Re: Kernel updates marked as "manually installed", prevents old kernels cleanup

[Erich Eickmeyer ]

Hi Julian,

Sounds good, but there's one caveat: If the Kubuntu users receive a
packagekit upgrade via Discover, packagekit will attempt to upgrade
itself while running. This causes a packagekit crash, from which the
recovery is via the command line:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt --fix-broken install
sudo apt full-upgrade

At this point, everything returns to normal, but for many users this can
be problematic, especially in a stable release. While not a regression
per se, the process would be problematic for Kubuntu users as they're
the ones in Focal using this upgrade method. More advanced users can
navigate this, but non-technical users would have a rough time.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1914278

Title:
  Kernel updates marked as "manually installed", prevents old kernels
  cleanup

Status in packagekit package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in packagekit source package in Focal:
  New
Status in packagekit source package in Jammy:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  With the machines I help administer, we have been finding situations
  where the /boot directory is filling-up beyond 3 kernels on LUKS
  encrypted systems. apt autoremove is not removing old kernels as
  expected.

  This may also be an issue with unattended-upgrades since I found the
  following line commented-out by default:

  // Remove unused automatically installed kernel-related packages
  // (kernel images, kernel headers and kernel version locked tools).
  // Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Kernel-Packages "true";

  We have had a system with as many as 15 kernel packages installed as a
  result of this not working as expected.

  The majority of these machines are using Discover to do their package
  upgrading, which uses PackageKit as its backend.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: apt 2.0.4
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-41.46~20.04.1-generic 5.8.18
  Uname: Linux 5.8.0-41-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.14
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  CurrentDesktop: KDE
  Date: Tue Feb  2 09:29:01 2021
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-11-07 (87 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 20.04.1 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200731)
  SourcePackage: apt
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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