Bug 1787512

Summary: gnome-software is trying to access network connection in the background
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: jajeon
Component: gnome-softwareAssignee: Richard Hughes <rhughes>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 7.6CC: brclark, jseunghw, klember, mcatanza, mkrajnak, rhughes, yuokada
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-08-27 15:41:55 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description jajeon 2020-01-03 08:36:06 UTC 
Description of problem:

gnome-software is trying to access network connections in the background.
"
$ grep 'gnome.org' journalctl_--no-pager_--catalog_--boot |tail -4
Dec 09 06:44:56 bliqmdb2 gnome-software[217458]: failed to call gs_plugin_refresh on shell-extensions: [*/*/*/source/shell-extensions/*] failed to download https://extensions.gnome.org//static/extensions.json: Connection terminated unexpectedly
Dec 09 06:45:16 bliqmdb2 gnome-software[217458]: failed to call gs_plugin_refresh on odrs: [*/*/*/source/odrs/*] failed to download https://odrs.gnome.org/1.0/reviews/api/ratings: Connection terminated unexpectedly
Dec 10 06:44:56 bliqmdb2 gnome-software[217458]: failed to call gs_plugin_refresh on shell-extensions: [*/*/*/source/shell-extensions/*] failed to download https://extensions.gnome.org//static/extensions.json: Connection terminated unexpectedly
Dec 10 06:45:16 bliqmdb2 gnome-software[217458]: failed to call gs_plugin_refresh on odrs: [*/*/*/source/odrs/*] failed to download https://odrs.gnome.org/1.0/reviews/api/ratings: Connection terminated unexpectedly
"

Currently only way to suppress this error message is:
1. disable gnome software start
"
/etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
... ...
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled = false 	
"

2. mask packagekit service
systemctl mask packagekit.service



Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
This issue was confirmed from RHEL7.6, however this problem exists even before.


How reproducible:
Issue can be reproduced on the system where outside network is not allowed


Expected results:
gnome-software should not option to disable network connection in the background

Additional info:

It looks like gnome has no option to disable this.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/issues/748
Comment 3 Richard Hughes 2020-02-11 13:48:17 UTC 
This is the gnome shell extensions website where we download a catalog of extensions to show in search results. You can delete the /usr/lib64/gs-plugins-*/libgs_plugin_shell-extensions.so if you would like to disable this functionality. Upstream this feature has moved to GNOME Shell and is no longer part of gnome-software.
Comment 4 jajeon 2020-03-05 00:00:01 UTC 
what could be the side effect of deleting library file?

Also, majority of customers who is using RHEL does not allow internet connection.
Why consider to disable as default and enable it as user really need it?
Comment 6 Richard Hughes 2020-07-01 09:07:15 UTC 
> what could be the side effect of deleting library file?

For the ODRS, the per-app ratings and review functionality will be unavailable. For shell-extensions, the non-installed GNOME shell extensions will not show.

> Why consider to disable as default and enable it as user really need it

Upstream in GNOME there's not really a "make everything configurable" mentality. For RHEL we could add configuration, but it's not something I'm super enthusiastic about.
Comment 9 Tomas Popela 2020-08-27 14:42:37 UTC 
Closing the bug as the attached customer case is closed.