Bug 472689

Summary: Discover fails when unattended-upgrade is running in the background
Product: [Applications] Discover Reporter: Philipp Keck <philipp.keck>
Component: discoverAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED DOWNSTREAM    
Severity: normal CC: aleixpol
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.24.7   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Philipp Keck 2023-07-27 06:23:04 UTC 
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Make sure you have updates to install (e.g. don't use your computer for a while).
2. Reboot. unattended-upgrades will start updating, but the user doesn't typically notice that.
3. Open Discover, click "Install updates". Any diligent user would do this after not using their computer for a while.
4. Enter password to confirm installation.

OBSERVED RESULT

Fails due to lack of installer lock, which is a hard-to-understand error message for (a) newbies or (b) people who don't know that unattended-upgrades is even enabled on their system.

EXPECTED RESULT

It doesn't fail. There's two concurrent processes trying to achieve basically the same thing: to install all available updates.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: Kubuntu 22.04
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.7
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.92.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

When encountering a lock error, discover could check if unattended-upgrades is running. If so, it could

(a) display a message that other upgrades are in progress, and/or
(b) wait for them to complete, and/or
(c) resume its own updates once the background process is complete, and/or
(d) in a "details" section show the log output of the background process (like `tail`) so that the user can verify that it isn't stuck and that it's worth waiting. This could be useful as there's no other kind of progress indicator in this case. If this isn't possible, the error message could point to the (canonical) log file location at least, so that the user knows where to look.
Comment 1 Bug Janitor Service 2023-07-27 06:33:35 UTC 
Thank you for the bug report!

However Plasma 5.24.7 is no longer eligible for support or maintenance from KDE; supported versions are 5.27, and 5.27 or newer. Please upgrade to a supported version as soon as your distribution makes it available to you. Plasma is a fast-moving project, and bugs in one version are often fixed in the next one.

If you need support for Plasma 5.24.7, please contact your distribution, who bears the responsibility of providing support for older releases that are no longer supported by KDE.

If you can reproduce the issue after upgrading to a supported version, feel free to re-open this bug report.