[Bug 1943189] [NEW] "cannot refresh whilst network offline" bug

[Erich Eickmeyer ]

Public bug reported:

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.

Unfortunately, the upstream PackageKit maintainers seem to be unwilling
to apply this fix themselves, seeing it as not an issue per
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/issues/336

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)

** Affects: packagekit (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Medium
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug impish

** Patch added: "Patch to fix packagekitd systemd service race condition"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1943189/+attachment/5524211/+files/10-wait-network-online.patch

** Changed in: packagekit (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Medium

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of
PackageKit-Team, which is subscribed to packagekit in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1943189

Title:
  "cannot refresh whilst network offline" bug

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/packagekit/+bug/1943189/+subscriptions