Bug 1442812 - Gnome updater (gnome-software) fails to update the system
Summary: Gnome updater (gnome-software) fails to update the system
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: gnome-software
Version: 30
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Richard Hughes
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2017-04-17 16:05 UTC by Basic Six
Modified: 2020-05-26 17:48 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
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Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-05-26 17:48:03 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


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Description Basic Six 2017-04-17 16:05:43 UTC
Description of problem:

This desktop system, which is running Mate, cannot be updated using the standard gui tools.

The package updater "gpk-update-viewer" simply showed a message box saying that there are no updates available, which is not true. After confirming that message box, it disappears. It said that within seconds, so it obviously didn't check for updates. In other words, it did not work.

In "gnome-software", after clicking on "Updates" (and waiting for many more minutes than it took dnf to show the list of updates), a list of available updates is shown. However, clicking on "Restart & Install" does nothing. To a simple desktop user, it seems like this most basic and important piece of the system is another broken tool, it doesn't work. Clearly, it should work and it works for other people, but the fact that it doesn't even show an error message and does nothing when clicking on "Restart & Install" makes it even worse.
Even a useless error message like "Unknown error" would be better than doing nothing.



Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

Fedora 25.

gnome-software 3.22.5

gnome-packagekit-common-3.22.1-1.fc25.x86_64
gnome-packagekit-3.22.1-1.fc25.x86_64
gnome-packagekit-installer-3.22.1-1.fc25.x86_64
gnome-packagekit-updater-3.22.1-1.fc25.x86_64



How reproducible:

Not sure.
Sometimes, the gui tools don't seem to work for some reason.



Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to use gui tools to update the system, e.g., gnome-software.
2. Click "Restart & Install".
3. Nothing. Not even an error message.



Actual results:

Clicking "Restart & Install" does nothing, no updates are being installed.



Expected results:

A basic feature like an update tool should work. Always. No exceptions.

If something unexpected causes the update to fail, an error message must be shown.



Additional info:

According to "dnf update", there are more than 700 updates available (mostly packages to be updated, a few new packages to be installed like "kernel", "bluez-tools", "rfkill" and so on, a few kernel packages to be removed and one skipped package with broken dependencies).

Running gnome-software in a terminal window prints this message:
13:41:13:0181 Gs  failed to call gs_plugin_add_installed on shell-extensions: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.Shell was not provided by any .service files

Followed by hundreds of these:
13:41:19:0951 Json json_object_has_member: assertion 'member_name != NULL' failed
13:41:19:0951 GLib g_strsplit: assertion 'string != NULL' failed
13:41:19:0951 GLib g_strv_length: assertion 'str_array != NULL' failed

It says something about a cancel action (but there is no cancel button):
13:59:25:0018 Gs  failed to call gs_plugin_refresh on packagekit-refresh: cancelled by user action

Then about 10 of these:
13:59:30:0671 Gs  State change on (null) from updatable to unavailable is not OK

And finally:
14:03:28:0994 Gs  Calling org.gnome.SessionManager.Reboot failed: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: Method "Reboot" with signature "" on interface "org.gnome.SessionManager" doesn't exist

Comment 1 Fedora End Of Life 2017-11-16 19:00:19 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 25 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 25. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version'
of '25'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version'
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not
able to fix it before Fedora 25 is end of life. If you would still like
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 2 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-03 08:34:33 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 26 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 26. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version'
of '26'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version'
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not
able to fix it before Fedora 26 is end of life. If you would still like
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-29 11:56:07 UTC
Fedora 26 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2018-05-29. Fedora 26
is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any
further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 4 Jia Yuan Lo 2018-11-13 11:24:05 UTC
The fact that gnome-software outputs these in the terminal should warrant that it should support running under MATE
00:53:37:0255 Gs  compatible-project: GNOME
00:53:37:0255 Gs  compatible-project: KDE
00:53:37:0255 Gs  compatible-project: XFCE
00:53:37:0255 Gs  compatible-project: MATE


and now that gnome-software 3.30.5 is in Fedora 29
I still can't use gnome-software under a pure MATE spin

I have tried installing gnome-software using this command 
to alleviate much of the error
$ sudo dnf install gnome-software rpm-ostree gnome-session
                                  ^libdnf1.so.1
                                             ^org.gnome.SessionManager maybe?


which up until trying to 'Restart & Update' output this error
00:57:12:0395 Gs  Calling org.gnome.SessionManager.Reboot failed: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: Method "Reboot" with signature "" on interface "org.gnome.SessionManager" doesn't exist

do I have to install the full gnome stack just to get gnome-software to update in MATE?

Comment 5 Kalev Lember 2018-11-13 12:22:59 UTC
gnome-software uses the gnome-shell shutdown dialog to initiate a reboot for offline updates. If you are interested in having the same functionality in MATE, then patches to gnome-software that add support for MATE's shutdown dialog are all very welcome.

Comment 6 Basic Six 2018-11-27 18:27:20 UTC
(In reply to jylo06g from comment #4)
> and now that gnome-software 3.30.5 is in Fedora 29
> I still can't use gnome-software under a pure MATE spin
> 
> do I have to install the full gnome stack just to get gnome-software to
> update in MATE?

No, I believe you do *not* have to install the full GNOME desktop environment just up upgrade your system.

I've also had this problem that gnome-software would allow me to download (prepare) a release upgrade but the "Install" button doesn't do much (it asks for a password and sometimes it shows a list of incompatible package names, like kernel ...). It doesn't actually start the upgrade process. I'm pretty sure this used to work in MATE as I've never used GNOME since they've removed half of their settings/features.

However, I noticed that a manual restart is now sufficient. So you first have to download the upgrade, then click "Install", enter the password and wait a minute for it just to make sure it doesn't do anything unexpected. Then close all running windows and restart the system normally.

If I recall correctly, this even worked in KDE last time I tried it (so that's an improvement), although the KDE menu often stops working when after a couple of days (uptime), at which point a "qdbus" command may be used to initiate a proper restart (open terminal with Ctrl + Alt + T, see Bug 1352205#c3 for example).

When rebooting, it should then say 'Installing system upgrade; this could take a while...', which means it's running the upgrade process. Unlike Debian, it won't show you any questions during that process as it's not interactive. When done, it'll finish the boot process, so you'll see the login screen. The first indication of a successful upgrade is the new background image.

You should then double-check that you're using the new release:

Via command line:

$ cat /etc/fedora-release 
Fedora release 29 (Twenty Nine)

GUI (Alt + F2, enter command):
kcmshell5 about-distro

or:
cinnamon-settings info

Comment 7 Ben Cotton 2019-10-31 20:26:40 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 29 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 29 on 2019-11-26.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '29'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 29 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 8 Basic Six 2019-11-07 12:16:40 UTC
I used gnome-software to upgrade from F30 to F31, in KDE. Fortunately, it works - if you know that clicking "Install" and confirming and nothing happens actually means that the upgrade process was prepared but could not be initiated and the Fedora developers didn't bother to tell the user about that. Any regular user would think that it's not possible to install the upgrade when nothing happens after clicking "Install".

But no, you have to click "Install" to trigger it, then close everything and reboot manually. It'll start the upgrade process while booting.

And because gnome-software cannot reboot while running in KDE ... it does nothing. Even Windows would show something useless as "Error 0x0". Please, for the love of god, just show SOMETHING.

Have you ever tried to explain how to update/upgrade the system to a regular user, someone who is not supposed to touch the command line? Those people click "Install" to start it and if that doesn't work, they call you.

Comment 9 Ben Cotton 2020-04-30 20:45:09 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 30 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 30 on 2020-05-26.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '30'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 30 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 10 Ben Cotton 2020-05-26 17:48:03 UTC
Fedora 30 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2020-05-26. Fedora 30 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


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