Software Updater

High CPU load when installing updates

Asked by James Gauth

When clicking the Install Updates button, the subsequent update installation uses 100% CPU for a very long time. When using apt in the terminal there is usually only a minor amount of CPU usage which leads me to believe that the update-manager apt wrapper is causing the load. I have no other Ubuntu boxes on hand so I can't test to see if this is specific to my machine. Is this something anyone is aware of?

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James Gauth
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Sam Cater (wraund-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#1

well it depends, is this while gettings updates, actually downloading them, or installing them. For installing it is perfectly normal, but for downloading that may be an issue

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James Gauth (james-gauth) said : 		#2

Well, usually the updates are quite small, so the downloading section might complete very quickly. It'd probably be during the installation side.

If I do 'apt-get update' and then 'apt-get upgrade' (which, I'm pretty sure does the same thing as update-manager), I can happily leave apt-get running in the terminal and get on with other work. If I use update-manager, basically it uses so much CPU that redraw doesn't even work. If I switch to another application, the switch only takes place when the installation is complete (or if it's a really really long installation, it may get around to switching after a long while).

Why is it perfectly normal for installation?

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Best James Gauth (james-gauth) said : 		#3

I've reverted to using update-manager's notification area icon to find out if updates are available and I now use an application launcher widget to run apt-get upgrade.