- This topic has 44 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated Feb 6-2:49 pm by Brian Masinick.
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ModdIt
Was mulling over complaints. .
Maybe this could be adapted and offered to users as a user convenience install option.Or we put a prominent howto in the forum for those who want a nanny.
default is to check daily and notify.. A down-arrow will appear in the desktop notification tray when updates are available, accompanied by a pop-up bubble telling you that updates are available. When it appears, click it, and it will guide you through the update process.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutoWeeklyUpdateHowToThat is probably what the DW critics are wishing for. I do have a few users who like the idea of a wake up call.
The cron apt package is 91.1kB, cron already in AntiX. Ram usage only when running and if neccesary notifying.
Can be configured for auto updates.
PPC
Hum, I think you had a brilliant idea, Moddit!
It never crossed my mind because I’ve never used cron, I seldom ear about that command and I’ve always assumed it eat away some RAM/CPU cicles, always running on the background… so I read that link you sent and found out that seemed to be a wrong assumption.Making your suggestion even more pratical (sorry if I get any detail wrong, like I said, I’v never used cron):
At installation/ first boot run a (yad) script (also available in the C.C.) that asks how often should antiX automatically check for updates (choices: Never/Daily/Weekly/Monthly).
That script would then delete any copy of the yad-updater script (or any other “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade” script you want to use) on all cron folders and copy it to the relevant folder (unless the user choose “never”).
The “Never” option should, for very “thick” users, warn that the user should regularly manually check for and apply updates!If I understand correctly how cron works, this is the ideal way for newbies (or absented minded users) to make sure they have a secure and updated system, without having to type a single line in the CLI ( yad-updater has a little GUI for the user to enter the password, and also pops up the most spartan pop up warning ever when the update/upgrade process is done, closing the terminal). As a security measure it does not perform a “sudo apt upgrade -y”- so users don’t upgrade any packages that they don’t to (example: a user complained in the forum that the browser got upgraded to a version that was incompatible with the computer’s CPU)
EDIT: I just tested this automatic semi GUI update process:
1- Make sure that the cron deamon is enabled, either at startup or manually:
ex: Manually:sudo service cron start2- Create the script you want to run, in our case:
`#!/bin/bash
DISPLAY=:0 /usr/local/bin/yad-updater`OR, if you want a confirmation prompt:
#!/bin/bash
DISPLAY=:0 yad –title ‘antiX updater’ –center –button=gtk-yes:’yad-updater’ –button=gtk-no:1 –text “Check for system updates now?”3- Save it in your home folder under the name “updater.sh”, make it executable.
4- Copy the script you just created to the “/etc/cron…” folder you want ( cron.daily , cron.weekly , cron.monthly )
ex, if you want to be reminded to check for updates every day:sudo cp ~/updater.sh /etc/cron.dailyDone: now you’ll never forget to check for updates (not as long as the cron deamon is running, at least)
Note: the “DISPLAY=:0 ” part of the script is needed to run the script on screen (if you don’t use that, yad-updater won’t show up on screen at the scheduled time)
P.
- This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by PPC.
- This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by PPC.
- This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by PPC.
Hi ppc, just trying to help fix a problem percieved by lazy users. We all use cron but mostly do not know it is cleaning up for us in the background. I guess the tool for apt has been around for a long time and at first used for upgrade of servers.
Lets see what anti thinks, this is the most lean and mean solution that came to mind.A user complained in the forum that the browser got upgraded to a version that was incompatible with the computer’s CPU.
Complained about the distro instead of looking in a mirror and severely chastising the responsible person.
My guess is 99% of users have no idea what release notes are let alone carefuly read them, before things break that is.
When things break they complain that somebody else should have done the thinking for them. :-). Especialy here in Germany.
Brian Masinick
Yeah, Cron waking up at convenient times (like when you are away or sleeping), and at times that the system has low activity is the perfect time to run Cron jobs.
On UNIX systems I used Cron, sometimes simply using the default provided and other times adding entries or modifying the dates and times for specific tasks to be performed.
Most tasks produce log files so that we can: 1) Make sure that they run and 2) The task works and completes as expected.
Not all tasks have to be performed in this manner but it’s a good idea to use it for as many regular maintenance items as possible that make sense.
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Brian MasinickBrian Masinick
By the way, the command itself is NOT capitalized, it is’cron’ and it is managed by a file known as the crontab.
Any system with complete documentation has details about both cron and crontab.
Running a search on the Internet will readily find them.
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Brian MasinickAnonymous
For use on potentially (intermittently or) infrequently -booted lappies, recommend using “anacron” (99kb package) instead of cron
https://packages.debian.org/buster/anacronIf the task runs only periodically, avoids overhead but… loses the everpresent feelgood [UpToDate] taskbar icon painted by an autostarted daemon
just trying to help fix a problem
percievedperceived by lazy usersyah, good idea.
Shifts the nature of ensuing help requests to:
“hi. my system shows updates are available. I wanna know, should i install them?”
or
“sez updates are available but doesn’t tell me what, exactly, so I’m afraid to proceed“BobC
What if a script would run at boot after internet was connected and then as a cron job every XXXXX (minutes, hours or days, pick a number or use the updates tab noted below) that would check for updates, and write the number of updates available to a file, and that would display in the conky window? The cost in terms of memory would be zero and system load would be reasonable.
We could add an “Update system” option on the antiX menu to actually run a script or program to do the updating via apt or apt-get. There are already menu options for “Software and Updates (looks like a repo manager, but the updates tab doesn’t seem to work)” and “Synaptic”, and “Control Centre/System/Manage Packages (which runs Synaptic)”, but maybe having one that runs a simple update the way anti always says to run it (sudo apt update; sudo apt dist-upgrade?) would be good.
I’m not sure how you prevent bad updates from causing problems without a rollback function. Murphy’s law says it would work just fine until you really needed it, then fail miserably, making the situation worse, LOL.
Just brainstorming…
- This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by BobC.
Brian Masinick
If there is complete history, then it will be possible to determine what caused the problem(s).
Just as apt-get install of a particular package or package group can install more than one package, an apt-get remove can pull it out and remove the error. When there is a fix the same group of packages can be installed.
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Brian Masinick@ skidoo, percieved perceived by lazy users, if you had bothered to look you would have found both spellings are prevalent. Posting that way is bovine dung and discriminatory.
yah, good idea.
Shifts the nature of ensuing help requests to:
“hi. my system shows updates are available. I wanna know, should i install them?”
or
“sez updates are available but doesn’t tell me what, exactly, so I’m afraid to proceed“This part really helpful. If you have smart solutions bring them up instead of spamming.
We could put an update system icon on the toolbar or menu system, or if there are updates available we could just rask if they want to update it then…
seaken64
@ skidoo, percieved perceived by lazy users, if you had bothered to look you would have found both spellings are prevalent. Posting that way is bovine dung and discriminatory.
If you have smart solutions bring them up instead of spamming.
Sorry Modditt, you’re incorrect on the spelling. Whether it is appropriate to correct spelling is always debated and you obviously took offense. But spelling is important. I use databases a lot. A misspelling will return irrelevant results.
skidoo can speak for himself. I only disagree with your suggestion that your spelling of perceived was correct due to it being prevalent.
Seaken64
On the topic of an update helper:
If the devs decide to add a tool to notify of available updates I think that would be fine. But how many little things like this get added over time and then bloat sets in? Maybe there will eventually be an “antiX Deluxe” version full of the same boat as everything else. But I hope the devs continue to offer a Basic version for those of us who don’t care about such things. I don’t believe any distro can be all things to everyone. Maybe some people just won’t be able to make antiX work for them and will leave a bad report. Is that so bad?
Seaken64
Brian Masinick
I don’t think that we have to worry about such things.
As we can see in the current state of things, we can start with a Core or Base distribution and end up with either a light, tight, lean, mean, simple distribution as we’ve had for a long time or you can also build a very full featured KDE Plasma distribution as Dolphin Oracle has effectively communicated recently.
The MX community has shared custom builds and rebuilds for many years. I think that the main distribution for both will remain true to their roots until it no longer makes sense to do so.
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Brian Masinick{ an edited post here got spamfiltered }
“Posting that way is bovine dung and discriminatory.”
The intentionally pointy reply was posted in response to someone sanctimoniously accusing underpriviliged users of being “lazy”.
If you’re awaiting an apology, take a number and get in the queue.Beyond reiterating the point, my expectation, that any further hand-holding measures will likely just
Shift the nature of ensuing help requests to:
“hi. my system shows updates are available. I wanna know, should i install them?”
or
“sez updates are available but doesn’t tell me what, exactly, so I’m afraid to proceed“I’ll accept the invitation (the pointed challenge) to suggest a few prospective “smart solutions”.
1) For future releases, do _NOT_ provide a publicly available URL for the iso. Instead, publicize a “download page” which is powered by LimeSurvey. Use a series of LimeSurvey pages to deliver exceptional “onboarding” ~~ steer potential users through pages containing screenshots of what to expect and, yes, quiz them on details presented.
2) Lock (archived as read-only) the existing conventional “forum” and replace it with a self-hosted StackExchange-alike (askubuntu.com -alike) discussion platform. https://www.question2answer.org/qa/ Not every topic title must be phrased as a question, but for a topic intended as a help request ~~ template + instructions will guide a seeker in providing sufficiently detailed info. When a seeker provides only sparse details, tag the topic “more info needed” and/or comment to instruct what special, additional, details are needed.
3) Recognize that solutions described within old, previously answered (solved) topics sometime become stale // outdated // incorrect. Issue karma points to participants who identify and tag such outdated posts//topics.
4) Recognize that some solutions are not readily achievable, some passionately proffered ideas are not widely shared. Provide ability Upvote (not necessarily also downvote ability) for folks to easily (few words, no words) signal what they too are interested in ~~ interested finding an answer to, tickled to have found an existing answer for, or hope to see answered (or hope to see a proposed feature added, or changed, or removed).
5) The release of “antiX 20” (whatever version) would be withheld, postponed, until members of the community had collectively stepped up to post sufficiently-detailed “howto” and “documentation” topics to cover (avoid, preclude) previously-asked questions.
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