Idea - Synaptic user verification & (future) automated updates

[Michael Vogt]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 09:26:30AM -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> Hello all,
Hi,
 
> I just had a design idea for Synaptic and how to integrate "automated"
> updates in the future.

Thanks this suggestions.
 
> Right now Synaptic requires admin (sudo) authentication BEFORE it
> starts up. In future, it might be worth-while to have the
> authentication happen when the update is to be applied (i.e. click
> Apply or whatever Apply morphs into).

This is a long standing feature request (using synaptic as user). I
wrote a prototype for this a while ago. It's doable but rather complex
and you need to use sudo for a lot of operations anyway (like
"update", "edit repositories", "apply"). If you are interessted in the
details see /usr/share/doc/synaptic/TODO.gz (section User-Mode).
 
> The reason I suggest this sequence is that this way "normal" users can
> use the computer and automagic checks for updates (security and/or
> stability and/or major features) can be scheduled to occur (let's say)
> weekly and to fire up Synaptic if important updates are present. The
> "normal" user would then have the option of post-poning the update if
> they don't have access to an admin account/password or they could
> inform the admin of the computer to check up on things.

Our current approach here is to use a new application
"upgrade-notifier". It's a small notification program that runs in the
background and checks if upgrades are available. If so, it shows a
small icon in the notification-area of the panel. The actual network
checking is done once per day via a cron-job. 

> Of course, there are other ways to achieve this but this is what came
> to mind (as a Mac OS X user ;-)... OS X allows normal users to run the
> OS software update app and download updates, but only an admin can
> install them).

We have a option (not in the GUI yet) to automatically download any
updates (in the same cron-job that does the update). It will be added
soon.

thanks,
 Michael

-- 
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo