[Bug 2034656] Re: Update Ubuntu ESM cache only once daily?

[Junien Fridrick]

@juliank : would you know how a trusty machine does its daily apt
activities (including ESM) ? Are the downloads spread out during the
day, or is everything done in cron.daily ?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2034656

Title:
  Update Ubuntu ESM cache only once daily?

Status in cloud-images:
  New
Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in ubuntu-advantage-tools package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Hi,

  We're seeing frequent alerts on the Ubuntu ESM archive servers due to
  surges in requests. On two systems, I'm seeing this:

  | Sep  6 05:47:16 machine-2 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 05:47:17 machine-2 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  6 10:49:35 machine-2 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 10:49:35 machine-2 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  6 17:17:16 machine-2 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 17:17:17 machine-2 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  6 23:47:16 machine-2 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 23:47:17 machine-2 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  7 01:55:02 machine-2 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  7 01:55:02 machine-2 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.

  On another:

  | Sep  6 02:41:02 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 02:41:03 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  6 09:02:40 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 09:02:41 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  6 15:32:40 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 15:32:41 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  6 22:02:40 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  6 22:02:41 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.
  | Sep  7 04:32:40 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Starting Update the local ESM caches...
  | Sep  7 04:32:42 is-bastion-ps5 systemd[1]: Finished Update the local ESM caches.

  This is all from `/usr/lib/systemd/system/esm-cache.service` which
  calls `/usr/lib/ubuntu-advantage/esm_cache.py`.

  Can we please have this run less frequent? Perhaps only once daily
  which aligns with APT and apt-daily-upgrade.service / unattended-
  upgrades?

  Perhaps check existence of a file and run if not, then age of that
  same file and only run if it's older than a day?

  I think, from what I can see, this may be triggered from
  /lib/systemd/system/ua-timer.timer and /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-
  hook.conf?

  See also LP:1554848 which was for APT.

  On Trusty and Xenial clients we only seem to update daily, but the
  problem is worse as it's a cron.daily job, so all clients fire
  simultaneously - could we get this changed to a cron.d job with a
  randomised firing time instead?

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