Bug 2360424

Summary:	gnome-software won't download OS upgrade
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Matthew Saltzman <mjs>
Component:	gnome-software	Assignee:	Milan Crha <mcrha>
Status:	CLOSED NEXTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	41	CC:	gnome-sig, mcl, mcrha, rhughes
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Desktop
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	gnome-software-48.0-1.fc42	Doc Type:	---
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2025-04-17 07:53:38 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Matthew Saltzman 2025-04-16 19:13:17 UTC

Most of my machines seem to be working fine, but I have one critical one where I have the notification for Fedora 42 in the gnome-software updates window, but when I click the Download button, the progress bar shows up to about 4% and then quits with no error message and reverts to showing the Download button.

I know I can use the dnf system-upgrade path, but I’d like to troubleshoot this in case there’s an issue that could bite in the future.

Updates to my current Fedora 41 have worked flawlessly up to this point.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open gnome-software, select updates, see the Fedora 42 Upgrade notice
2. Click the Download button
3.
Actual Results:
Progress bar shows briefly (up to about 4%) then vanishes, restoring the button.

Expected Results:
Upgrade packages are downloaded and upgrade proceeds.

Additional Information:
It is just one of several machines I've upgraded, so not sure if it's a bug triggered by something on the machine or a misconfiguration someplace, but the package isn't being very helpful. No messages, no logs. Tried starting from a terminal, but that doesn't provide any additional information.

Comment 1 Mark Chandler 2025-04-16 23:28:49 UTC

I have the same issue.
Running "pkcon upgrade-system" from a terminal also fails. But it throws an error about RPMfusion GPG keys.

$ pkcon upgrade-system 
Getting system upgrades                 [                         ] (0%)  
(pkcon:21376): GLib-CRITICAL **: 09:18:23.146: g_variant_new_string: assertion 'string != NULL' failed
                                        [=========================]         
Testing changes                         [=========================]         
Finished                                [=========================]         
Fatal error: Failed to download gpg key for repo 'rpmfusion-free-tainted': Curl error (37): Could not read a file:// file for file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora-[Invalid [Couldn't open file /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora-[Invalid]

Comment 2 Milan Crha 2025-04-17 07:53:38 UTC

Thanks for bug report. I do not know how you ran gnome-software from the terminal, but I guess when you:

    gnome-software --quit
    gnome-software

then it'll print the reason there (simply make sure the second command will not stop immediately, because if it does, then it passed the request to an already running instance and closed itself).

There is also

   gnome-software --verbose

to make it extensively chatty. An interesting part comes before you press the Download button.

As Mark noted, these errors come from the PackageKit, thus the pkcon is most likely also affected. The gnome-software "is supposed" to claim the error in the GUI, there's no doubt about it. There is [1], whose fix landed only for the 48.x series.

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/-/issues/2761

Comment 3 Matthew Saltzman 2025-04-17 20:54:08 UTC

Just to close the book, I did get the update done with gnome-software. I had to disable the Dropbox repo in order to get the download running, and I had to disable the Microsoft Teams repo to get the app to actually reboot and do the install. Apparently, they failed to download the config files, and that caused the app to fail.

I don't think those are unreasonable steps to require, but the fact that there was no error report was the killer.