Ubuntu
update-manager package

Lack of feedback during updates

Asked by Tim Pearce

The update/install processes in Ubuntu (Update Manager, Software Centre esp.) are not giving enough feedback on what they are doing.

I assume it's meant to 'hide' any 'frightening' technical stuff, but the effect is to make it look like the update or install has stopped working.

The first time I used the Update Manager, there were a lot of updates. I expected some sort of feedback on progress of the updates. When it had sat there for quite a long time, apparently not doing anything, I killed it. It wasn't till I used the repair mode boot option that I discovered there were a whole bunch of updates. In the repair mode, it shows the output from dpkg/apt.

Update Manager and Software Centre, don't even give the option of showing this output. Surely there can be no harm in giving this option.

The software centre show what step it's up to back gives very little by way of percent done.

In short, the update/install processes are trying to be too user friendly and alienating more technical people like myself.

Tim

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Revision history for this message
marcus aurelius (adbiz) said : 		#1

there's a progress status bar and you can click the arrow beside the details word to see the packages it's installing, etc.

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Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#2

The expected behavior of update-manger is to give progress bars with optional details, but I have one thumbdrive which does nothing but make the cursor busy image -- no other windows for progress ever open. This is a bug. Most puzzling since I have two almost identical thumbdrives, one displays the progress windows, the other does not. The drives differ only in their underlying partition geometry, and in slight phase differences in updates.

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Tim Pearce (tim-our-eden) said : 		#3

The problem Ubfan describes, seems to be the same as mine.

I don't get a progress bar, just a 'busy' cursor.

I am running on an eeepc 1000, with a solid state disk. I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 desktop on a high speed SDHC card.

I looked at the UNR, but didn't like it.

Tim

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#4

You have to fill a bug (as a wish-list) or go to Ubuntu brainstorming to reach developer.

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Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#5

I fixed both my thumbdrives by running update-manager from a terminal with sudo.
sudo update-manager
I thought running update-manager as an unprivledged user might have messed them up, but I could not duplicate the state they were in after they were fixed.

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