No Notifications for Template Updates

Recently I got some new problems related to updating my qubes. Some of these problem are new, some I not sure when started.

Debian qubes:

  • I stopped getting notification about new updates. When I manually force an update check, the update manager finds the newest packages and I complete the process successfully. But if I don’t check for updates, the package manager doesn’t notify me. Even this not always works right away: sometimes I have to check updates 2-3 times manually until my QubesOS sees and can fetch the updates.
  • Despite to the fact of the successful updates, every update log finish with this line:

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Fedora qubes:

  • Today the package manager alerted me that a new update is available. When I applied the update, qubes updater said there are no updates and no packages are updated (and ended up with the yellow checkmark). I tried to update manually once more, and this time it fetched the updates which were out there, and the update succeeded.
  • The update logs on my fedora always finishing with this line:

dracut[E]: Module ‘systemd-pcrphase’ depends on module ‘tpm2-tss’, which can’t be installed
dracut[E]: Module ‘systemd-cryptsetup’ depends on module ‘crypt’, which can’t be installed

Does anyone knows the potential causes? What could be the problem here?

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What specific templates do not have functioning notifications in Qubes Updater?

I noticed the same last week. Only Fedora-based templates get “updates available” notifications, including dom0.
I’ve seen debian-12-xfce, debian-minimal, and whonix -based templates exhibit the behavior described by @qubemanager : no updates notification, updates are available and installed by running the template updater (GUI or CLI, both work), and the update is ran twice, the final result being “0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.” (on 4.2.4)

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@barto Yes there is a problem with the Debian-12 template update notifications, I think it started just before the 12.10 sub-release, please create an issue.

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I created the issue :

Basic workaround (see @qubemanager 's first post ) : launch Qubes Update and click in the checkbox of the debian-12 template, click on the bottom Upgrade button.

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That’s not fixing the “no notification for template updates” issue as written in the title of this thread.

You are right, it’s a workaround (not a fix) for the template update, not the available update notification.

Please @barto , try the tee change I tested in the issue analyzing, and report as a comment in the issue or here, if it works or not for you.

Hi @ludovic,
The teefix described on github worked for me! Good find, kudos!
So I took a random debian-12-minimal-based template and removed the " | tee…" in /usr/lib/qubes/upgrades-installed-check as described in the git issue. Powered off the template, started a qube based on that template, and 5 minutes later… boom, “Updates Available”.

Thanks for looking into the issue!

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I had to install xdg-desktop-portal-gtk to solve another issue, and it made my debian 12 templates work again with qubes updater

Hi @renehoj ,
I’m curious, please could you check the qubes-update-check.service logs in a debian qube? Are you using the 4.2.4 Qubes-OS with stable repositories?

Five minutes after the debian qube startup, the qubes-update-check.timer, launches the qubes-update-check.service, which verifies if update are available and notifies dom0 about (un)available updates for the debian template.

So please, report here or as a comment in the above issue, the output of this command : sudo journalctl -fu qubes-update-check.service

I’m still getting the error

Apr 15 06:25:57 user-home upgrades-status-notify[934]: tee: /proc/self/fd/2: No such device or address

Guess installing the package didn’t change anything, and the installation just ran the update check once.

I hadn’t seen notifications from the templates in a long time, so getting the notification pop up made me think something had changed.

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I have same issue.
Version of my Qubes os is 4.2.4, but Debian-template don’t receive notification of update.
But Fedora-template receives notification of update, there are not issue.

Serious problem is that Whonix-template don’t receive notification of update too.
This cause of this problem is that Whonix is based on Debian.
Whonix is safely by default, if I change the setting, it is dangerous for default privacy.

Why has not this issue caused a big deal?
What is solution to this issue?

Related: from yesterday (read the thread and the replies).
A workaround is described a few posts earlier in this thread (git link) and my reply.
Probably the fix will reach R4.2 “sometime in the next weeks” :tm:

@alimirjamali wrote:

I also see many comments on #9895 indicating packages pushed to the 4.2 testing repos in the past 24 hours.

In other words, it looks like the bug has been fixed, and the fix is currently being tested. If you would like to help test the fix, please see:

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