Update manager never popping up

[gfmichaud]

Well there might be something but I’ve been monitoring this since april and never saw any update notification whatsoever. I’ll keep you posted in the next few days / weeks but I’m note hopeful.

[peterwhite23]

What about this one then?

@gfmichaud

I just rebooted and got a Gnome notification telling me about 37 updates.

[phil-hughes]

The notification can be easy to miss if you are not at your computer when it pops up.

There is a systray icon which serves as a permanent reminder that updates are available. In 25.10 this was enabled by default, but in 26.04 it is disabled by default for some reason. It would be worth enabling to see if you are in fact getting notifications.

It can be enabled with

gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier show-updates-status-icon true

or the dconf equivalent.

Bug #2148611 “No way to enable the update indicator” : Bugs : update-notifier...

[gfmichaud]

@peterwhite23 That notification only showed after a reboot. Why so? I don’t think it’s the way things are intented to work.
@phil-hughes I’ll try that, thanks.

@all : Your answers make me wonder: am I the only one with this issue? Do you all regularly receive Gnome notifications telling you updates are available?

[peterwhite23]

@gfmichaud

That notification only showed after a reboot. Why so?

I think, that’s because, soon after the machine is up, the APT cache gets updated and if apt list --updradable returns a non-empty list, the notification is triggered, because updates have become available. If you dismiss the notification, there might not be another one, if no new upgrades become available. As I said, I don’t actually know, if that’s how it works, but it sounds reasonable. You have been notified.
Perhaps your issue is best raised on the GNOME Discourse. The folks there should be more qualified to speak to the intended behavior.

Also, I don’t need update notifications; it’s cheap to run sudo apt --update upgrade in a terminal, where I live.

---

I’ve just had a look at update-notifier-download.timer:

# /usr/lib/systemd/system/update-notifier-download.timer
[Unit]
Description=Download data for packages that failed at package install time
After=network.target network-online.target systemd-networkd.service NetworkManager.service connman.service

[Timer]
OnStartupSec=5m
OnUnitActiveSec=24h

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

So it runs five minutes after the system starts and then once daily. Maybe check if that timer is even running? But it should be, if you haven’t disabled it.

[gfmichaud]

Let’s try to make a clean test.

I installed updates manually at around 8:00 pm today (July 12th).
Now I have a value of 1783879060 for com.ubuntu.update-manager launch-time
and com.ubuntu.update-notifier regular-auto-launch-interval set to 1.

I did apt update ; apt list --upgradable now shows me 2 updatable packages.
For now /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available still shows 0 updates pending.

For me, expected behaviour would be that at some point between 8 pm tomorrow (July 13th) and 8 pm the day after (July 14th) I get notified (either by way of a Gnome notification or Update Manager opening itself) of pending updates. Whithout having to reboot or whatever.

[graymech]

Now if this was Ubuntu 24.04 LTS we could open Software & Updates>Updates tab and set the “check for updates” time period. (It includes “Never.” And also set the display period. Which is Immediately: Display weekly or Display fortnightly.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS does not included the Software & Updates utility, We can install it if we want to. I have not. I do not use 26.04 daily. So, I load 26.04 when I want to and update manually when I do.

Regards

[Dennis_N]

@gfmichaud

How are we (standard desktop users) supposed to be notified of regular updates?

I haven’t seen the update manager pop up like it did in some previous releases. Instead, in Ubuntu 26.04, there is an icon which shows on the top panel indicating updates are ready to be installed. Click on it to install them. It should be enabled by default in 26.04. Check in dconf-editor, com.ubuntu.update-notifier. The switch “show updates status icon” should be ON.

[avb66]

@gfmichaud

am I the only one with this issue?

I have not seen a usual popup on any of 26.04 VM. I attributed it to the short uptime (I boot them just to test something).

[Dennis_N]

@avb66

I have not seen a usual popup on any of 26.04 VM. I attributed it to the short uptime (I boot them just to test something).

Yes. Nothing may appear until at least 15-20 min. uptime. When exactly seems unpredictable to me.

This topic appeared in this forum back in May. The solution was this post:

Updates and Notification of Updates in Ubuntu 26.04

It’s still there, but you have to tweak a dconf/gsetting or two. Easiest way to do that is with the dconf-editor which is a gui application to configure those settings. Not installed by default so go ahead and install it: sudo apt install dconf-editor Then in dconf-editor navigate to com->ubuntu->update-notifier->show-updates-status-icon. Flip the toggle for “Use default value” to off and then change the Default value to “True”. The editor will notify you a setting has changed and prompt you t…

Also installing “Software and Updates” utility might have been necessary. Not sure about this. It is not installed by default in 26.04.

[avb66]

Indeed. Looking at the update-notifier source code - in the past it directly launched update-manager; now it only shows tray icon which is disabled by default.

@Dennis_N

Also installing “Software and Updates” utility might have been necessary. Not sure about this.

I do not have anything with this name in the application list and update-notifier started to show the icon after

gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier show-updates-status-icon true

[Norm24]

@avb66

@Dennis_N

Also installing “Software and Updates” utility might have been necessary. Not sure about this.

I do not have anything with this name in the application list and update-notifier started to show the icon after

It’s official name is software-properties-gtk. sudo apt install software-properties-gtk will install it.

[avb66]

@Norm24

It’s official name is software-properties-gtk

This package is not installed here.

[celticwarrior]

Indeed. It was removed from the default installation in Ubuntu 26.04.

You can install it if you want as explained above.

[gfmichaud]

@avb66 and @Dennis_N

From what you saw, does the com.ubuntu.update-notifier show-updates-status-icon parameter controls both the tray icon AND the Gnome Notification ?

[avb66]

I do not remember notification, only tray icon. I may have missed it though, will check next time.

[gfmichaud]

@gfmichaud

Let’s try to make a clean test.

I installed updates manually at around 8:00 pm today (July 12th).
Now I have a value of 1783879060 for com.ubuntu.update-manager launch-time
and com.ubuntu.update-notifier regular-auto-launch-interval set to 1.

I did apt update ; apt list --upgradable now shows me 2 updatable packages.
For now /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available still shows 0 updates pending.

For me, expected behaviour would be that at some point between 8 pm tomorrow (July 13th) and 8 pm the day after (July 14th) I get notified (either by way of a Gnome notification or Update Manager opening itself) of pending updates. Whithout having to reboot or whatever.

A 10:30pm on July 13th, nothing has happened.

apt list --upgradable still shows me 2 updatable packages.

/var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available still shows 0 updates pending.

No tray icon appeared ; no notification showed up.

[avb66]

@gfmichaud

No tray icon appeared ; no notification showed up.

1. update-notifier monitors the software lists (/var/lib/apt/lists) and compares timestamps with the last time updates were installed. To get any type of notifications you need to trigger apt update.
2. Ubuntu is using phased updates for some packages. On my system:

bor@bor-Standard-PC-Q35-ICH9-2009:~$ apt-cache policy  software-properties-qt software-properties-common python3-software-properties | grep -i phased
     0.120.1 500 (phased 10%)
     0.120.1 500 (phased 10%)
     0.120.1 500 (phased 10%)
bor@bor-Standard-PC-Q35-ICH9-2009:~$ 

So, these packages are not considered as available updates by update-notifier or update-manager:

bor@bor-Standard-PC-Q35-ICH9-2009:~$ apt list --upgradeable
python3-software-properties/resolute-updates 0.120.1 all [upgradable from: 0.120]
software-properties-common/resolute-updates 0.120.1 all [upgradable from: 0.120]
software-properties-qt/resolute-updates 0.120.1 all [upgradable from: 0.120]
bor@bor-Standard-PC-Q35-ICH9-2009:~$ /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check 
0;0bor@bor-Standard-PC-Q35-ICH9-2009:~$ 

Zero updates.

Oh, and I got notification in addition to the tray icon on another VM; I believe it is intentionally delayed for some time. It is controlled by the no-show-notifications. Maybe it is not shown unless tray icon is also shown.

[avb66]

@gfmichaud

controls both the tray icon AND the Gnome Notification ?

If I understand the logic correctly, pending notifications are cancelled if the tray icon is not shown on assumption that updates may have been installed in the meantime. This does not play well with tray icon visibility being optional.

[gfmichaud]

So… If I sum it all up:

update-notifier monitors a bunch of apt files to see if apt operations have been performed.

When some have, it uses /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check to get the number of regular and security updates.

If this number is higher than the last time he checked (or 0;0 at startup) then update-notifier takes action :

• it displays a tray icon if com.ubuntu.update-notifier show-updates-status-icon is true

• it sends a notification based on com.ubuntu.update-notifier regular-auto-launch-interval and com.ubuntu.update-manager launch-time AND if the tray icon is displayed

This means that no notification is ever sent if com.ubuntu.update-notifier show-updates-status-icon is false, which is default in 26.04.

Conversely, a user who wants to be periodically notified of standard updates (e.g. every 7 days) has no way to to do it without enabling a tray icon showing immediately when updates are available.

This looks like an issue to me.