[Bug 1943189] Re: "cannot refresh whilst network offline" bug

[Erich Eickmeyer ]

** Description changed:

+ Impact]
+ 
  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
+ [Test Plan]
+ 
+  * Install Kubuntu or Ubuntu Studio
+ 
+  * While connected to network, Run Discover
+ 
+  * Discover will complain about "cannot refresh whilst offline", which
+ is being communicated from PackageKit. All functionality in Discover is
+ hindered from this point forward. This is due to a hung packagekitd
+ process which sees the network offline, even though this is false.
+ 
+ [Where problems could occur]
+ 
+  * packagekitd's systemd service will time-out after 90 seconds if
+ systemd finds no network, which means any update notifications will not
+ automatically start until packagekitd is manually started. Luckily,
+ Discover and GNOME Software both attempt to start packagekitd for the
+ user when run. I'd consider this to be expected behavior for an offline
+ system. The fix is mostly to prevent the false-negative of the system
+ being offline when it's really not.
+ 
+ [Other Info]
+  
+  * This fix has been accepted upstream by the PackageKit maintainers as a sane workaround for when gio misbehaves or otherwise. It's a decent safety net. https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/pull/506
  
  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)

** Also affects: packagekit (Ubuntu Focal)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: packagekit (Ubuntu Hirsute)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1943189

Title:
  "cannot refresh whilst network offline" bug

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