Lucid screwed some users after upgrade/unsolicited update

[Clay Weber]

On Tuesday, June 15, 2010 06:40:27 am Steve Morris wrote:
> On 15/06/10 14:43, Basil Chupin wrote:
> > On 15/06/10 07:56, Steve Morris wrote:
> >> On 13/06/10 23:09, Basil Chupin wrote:
> >>> On 13/06/10 22:49, Steve Morris wrote:
> >>>> On 09/06/10 00:57, Alvin wrote:
> >>>>> On Wednesday 02 June 2010 22:37:34 Steve Morris wrote:
> >>>>>> I used the alternate cd to upgrade from Karmic to Lucid 
and
> >>>>>> yesterday morning kpackagekit did a package update 
without telling
> >>>>>> me it was doing
> >>>>>> it, even though on Karmic I had explicitly disabled this. A 
second
> >>>>>> of the 5 users defined to my system tried to logon 
yesterday and
> >>>>>> had all sorts of problems.
> >>>>>> First they were required to change their password, even 
though in
> >>>>>> Karmic
> >>>>>> password changing was disabled, why?
> >>>>>> Secondly, for the user who tried to logon her home 
directory
> >>>>>> ownership
> >>>>>> had been changed to root, plus her's and 2 other users 
uid had been
> >>>>>> changed or ownership had been stuffed such that, her 
home directory
> >>>>>> contents were owned by a second user, the second users 
home
> >>>>>> directory and contents were owned by a third user and, 
the third
> >>>>>> users home directory and contents were owned by the 
first user. The
> >>>>>> environment for
> >>>>>> the other 2 users was unchanged. What is happening 
here and why?
> >>>>>> Also, I suspect this was caused by yesterday mornings 
unsolicited
> >>>>>> update, Konsole will now no longer run complaining of an 
issue with
> >>>>>> /bin/bash. What caused this and how do I remedy this (I 
assume its a
> >>>>>> case of uninstalling/reinstalling its package, but which 
one)?
> >>>>>> The other question this raises is, how do I prevent this 
from
> >>>>>> happening
> >>>>>> again in the future?
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I have no idea about what happened to you. Did you find 
something out
> >>>>> in the
> >>>>> meantime?
> >>>> 
> >>>> I still have no idea why the uids of the users were changed, 
but since
> >>>> changing them back they haven't been altered.
> >>>> 
> >>>>> Aside from security updates, when unattended-upgrades is 
installed,
> >>>>> there
> >>>>> should be no automatic updates.
> >>>>> I'm using aptitude instead of kpackagekit, but kpackagekit 
is
> >>>>> installed and I
> >>>>> have never known it to do anything without permission.
> >>>> 
> >>>> Kpackagekit is still downloading and installing updates even 
though I
> >>>> haven't asked it to, and I can't find any options to turn it off.
> >>> 
> >>> You haven't really tried, have you? :-)
> >> 
> >> I have gone into the configuration options of kpackagekit 
several
> >> times and can't find any options to tell it to notify me of new
> >> updates but not to download them until I tell it too, or I run the
> >> updates through synaptic. If you know of somewhere else to 
look I
> >> would be grateful if you could tell me where the options are.
> > 
> > If you are really desperate then you can always simply uninstall 
the
> > kpackagekit app. itself.
> > 
> > But there is, under Sources for the repos, the menu where you 
configure
> > what you want kpackage to do. Have you looked there?
> > 
> > BC
> 
> Thankyou. I had seen this option but I don't have it active so I 
assumed
> this was not it as with the option to check disabled it should not 
even
> be checking for updates let alone installing them without checking 
for
> authority. I am assuming the upper half of this tab does not override
> the checking option and that its specification is which types of 
updates
> I want checked, although having said this I enabled the checking  
and
> rebooted, and kpackagekit still downloaded and installed security
> updates anyway. So it looks like this process doesn't work properly 
and
> needs rewriting.
> 
> regards,
> Steve

Have you tried uninstalling KPackagekit? It is that application that is 
not behaving correctly as per the bug report I posted earlier. As you 
seem to be using Synaptic anyway, you do loose the notifications in 
the systray, but at this time, it is the only way to stop this.

They have been discussing this with the KPackagkit folks so hopefully 
something can be fixed.

Clay