Gnome Shutdown Dialog - Install pending software updates

Rocky Linux Help & Support
1

Since upgrading from 9.4 to 9.5, I now get “Install pending software updates” tick box when trying to shut down from gdm (not logged in).

There’s a forum post here with a very good screenshot showing the issue
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/how-to-disable-the-gnomes-install-pending-software-updates-feature/79860

I’m trying to disable that tick box, I don’t want updates to be installed except on a designated day.

The bigger issue, is that non sudo users can now install updates (at different times) on differnet machines just by shutting them down, so all machines in the lab will now have different package versions…

2

IIRC, its forced by gnome-software, take a look into the preferences and disable download-updates …

3

gnome-software, meaning “Applications : System Tools : Software”

I have all update settings set to disabled.

But it’s a bit worrying if gnome-software is dictating operating system upgrades?

4

Dictate it this way: yum remove gnome-software

5

Not necessarily.

First, doesn’t the Fedora thread say that the messages show up even without gnome-software? That the real deal is the PackageKit?

Regardless of who does it, the actor sniffs for available updates and notifies the user.
If the (regular) user ticks the box, then on next boot systemd will run dnf up and then reboot.

An unprivileged user can thus get the updates, and the reboot afterwards ensures that all get into use. Convenient for casual users, if dnf up gets the job done.

6

A combination of ‘polkit’, ‘PackageKit’ and ‘gnome-software’ amounts to “privilege elevation by design”, and all to appease the “casual user”, but wasn’t it supposed to be “enterprise” linux?

I think this feature had been there for a long time, but wasn’t working; I did see a changelog where they said it didn’t always work due to PackageKit daemon being idle. I looked at my old 9.4 logs and I can see PackageKit getting “permission denied”, so it never worked on my system until 9.5

About a year ago, some people on the forum were saying their system broke “after the auto-update”, but others were saying there is no “auto-update”.

Turning it off

  1. polkit (if you want to keep the packages)
  2. mask the PackageKit service
  3. Uninstall ‘gnome-software’ and ‘PackageKit’

I used #3, as I don’t need a GUI version of DNF, and I also noticed PackageKit was not in sync with DNF. In addition, PackageKit uses a lot of resources that don’t provide any benifit (in my case).