Bug 327404

Summary:	Update Applet Additional Updates Confusing
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 10.3	Reporter:	Crispin Cowan <crispin>
Component:	Update Problems	Assignee:	Joerg Kress <jkress>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	RC 1
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86
OS:	openSUSE 10.3
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Development	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Crispin Cowan 2007-09-21 23:37:51 UTC

The Update Applet has a button to select for "additional updates". I tried it, and it did this:

1. Spun slowly for a long time, with helpful text saying "you can't terminate this to protect your system stability, please be patient."

2. Froze for a long time.

3. Resumed spinning, this time quickly.

4. Reported success, turned my update applet green.

But it did *not* tell me what it had updated.

I looked in /var/log/YaST2/y2log and it showed no activity for 30 minutes prior while this "additional updates" was running.

Comment 1 Stephan Binner 2007-09-22 08:14:16 UTC

Is this with the GNOME or KDE update applet?

Comment 2 Crispin Cowan 2007-09-22 16:13:03 UTC

That is the GNOME applet. Sorry I left that out.

Comment 3 Crispin Cowan 2007-09-22 16:38:10 UTC

I just had a mandatory update come through, and it did largely the same thing, only faster :) Probably because it is Saturday.

Again, it did not tell me what it had updated, and left no records at all in /var/log/YaST2/y2log and in fact nothing in /var/log/YaST2 had been changed for 30 minutes prior to the update.

It also has a new problem: The first time I saw it go red, there appeared to be actual updates to be installed. But right after it finished, it turned red again, but this time there is nothing to update. Repeatedly clicking the applet and running the updater doesn't clear it, it keeps turning red.

Comment 4 Crispin Cowan 2007-09-23 05:20:25 UTC

My applet turned green some time this afternoon, without me doing anything to it. Someone fixed a problem at the head end?

Comment 5 Crispin Cowan 2007-09-23 18:59:01 UTC

Some more information on why this is "confusing".

When you have a red applet for updates, you click on it and you have the choices of "details", "cancel", or "install".

Install just goes ahead and does the update, but does not tell you what it is installing.

Details brings up the YaST package manager, which shows you the list of installed packages and the list of available packages, but does NOT show you the list of updates to be installed. Worse, if you click "accept" then it quits and installs nothing, because you (apparently) did not select anything.

Comment 6 Joerg Kress 2007-09-24 08:06:46 UTC

Thanks for the reports.

1) For the logs: You look in the wrong place. As we use zypper to install the updates when clicking "Install", you have to look in the zypper logs: /var/log/zypper.log

2) What gets installed: this was one of the design goals. Keep confusing information to a minimum. (Un)fortunately showing a huge list of what gets updated is one of the major complaints by new users in all distributions. This should be addressed.

However, I can agree, for those who want a minimum of information we should add some kind of display what patch/package is worked on. I'd like to keep an enhancement bug around for post 10.3

3) Red update coming twice: this was apparently an update of the update stack. In this case only these updates are shown and installed and after the restart of the applet the rest is shown. I can agree, that this might be confusing but we agreed to remain silent in this case.

4) Details brings up Package Manager: Solved. Now it starts Online Update. Caveat: just handles patches no packages.

5) Your comment #3 and comment #4: I can't really tell why, but I assume that it didn't recheck for updates as it should after performing an update thus it stays red. Thus it turned green after the next check. What have you done exactly?

Comment 7 Crispin Cowan 2007-09-24 18:42:14 UTC

1. look in /var/log/zypper.log. got it.

2. I agree with the "keep it simple" approach. It makes sens that there is one button for "just do it" and another for "details". The problem is that the "details" button doesn't do the update.

3. The weirdness with the red icon clearly looks like changes being made at the head end.

4. I'll check it out. Patches but not packages makes sense, but what happens if a patch induces a new dependency that induces new required packages?

5. What exactly I did: Click on the red icon. Let it update. When it is done, it turns red again. Wait a few hours while doing noting related to packages. It spontaneously turns green.

Hard to test it right now. The Saturday night kernel update broke my wifi (see bug #308830 ) so I had to revert to the RC1 kernel, and so my update icon is now red for a reason.

Comment 8 Joerg Kress 2007-09-25 10:57:19 UTC

OK, so 2. is also fixed with the last update by calling online_update instead of sw_single.

4. This is handled by zypper. "Just patches, no packages" means that online_update is not able to upgrade packages to newer versions if there is no patch that tells it to do so. E.g. foo.rpm is from some 3rd party repo and is not included in any patch, it will not be updated by online_update. But don't 

5. I can't really tell why, maybe you can send me your /var/log/zypper.log Maybe some patch has been withdrawn or something.

Comment 9 Crispin Cowan 2007-09-26 09:50:56 UTC

I think it was caused by withdrawing something, and we can close this now.

Comment 10 Joerg Kress 2007-09-26 10:37:14 UTC

Closing Bug, Changing to LATER

Reminder to implement a way to have more details during installation of updates if user wants this.

Comment 11 Bugzilla Account Maintenance 2008-09-02 18:07:49 UTC

Because the LATER and REMIND resolutions have been removed, the resolution of this bug has changed from LATER to WONTFIX. If this bug needs to be reconsidered, reopen it and set a future "Target Milestone for Fix."