No dom0 update notification

[lubellier]

Qubes OS release

R4.1, dom0 stable repository.

Brief summary

In 4.1, the dom0 update notification no more works. I remember that it worked with 4.0.

When a dom0 update is available, there is no notification in the XFCE tray bar.

See the reports from the users in the forum : Dom0 Doesn’t Always Show Updates Available.

A lot of users don't update dom0 because nothing notify them of an available update. So this is a major issue.

Some users (me included) launch manual update from qubes-update-gui (check Enable updates for qubes without known available updates., check dom0, Next).

Steps to reproduce

• In Qubes Global settings, verify that check for dom0 updates is checked
• Wait a dom0 available update in dom0 update-status
• wait a complete day
• check if a qubes-update notification appears in the XFCE tray bar.

Expected behavior

A star icon displayed in the the XFCE tray bar when a dom0 is available.

Actual behavior

No star icon displayed in the the XFCE tray bar whereas dom0 updates are available.

Related issues

• qubes-dom0-update ignores --check-only option #7417
• Updating via Salt falsely claims to succeed when it actually fails #6585

[lubellier]

Analysis

The dom0 update check is done via cron.daily:

[user@dom0 ~]$ ls -l /etc/cron.daily/
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  77 Mar  5 00:00 lvm-cleanup
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 347 Mar  5 00:00 qubes-dom0-updates.cron

How is the cron executed?

with the crond.service, from cronie, see:

systemctl status crond.service
systemctl cat crond.service
[user@dom0 ~]$ rpm -qf /usr/sbin/crond
cronie-1.5.5-2.fc32.x86_64

How is the daily cron executed?

With /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron, which run anacron -s if not yet runned today.

Where are the cron logs?

sudo journalctl --since "1 month ago" -u crond.service

Daily logs are :

Apr 06 17:01:01 dom0 anacron[9984]: Will run job `cron.daily' in 5 min.
Apr 06 17:01:01 dom0 anacron[9984]: Jobs will be executed sequentially
Apr 06 17:01:01 dom0 run-parts[9986]: (/etc/cron.hourly) finished 0anacron
Apr 06 17:06:01 dom0 anacron[9984]: Job `cron.daily' started
Apr 06 17:06:01 dom0 run-parts[10011]: (/etc/cron.daily) starting lvm-cleanup
Apr 06 17:06:01 dom0 run-parts[10016]: (/etc/cron.daily) finished lvm-cleanup
Apr 06 17:06:01 dom0 anacron[9984]: Job `cron.daily' terminated
Apr 06 17:06:01 dom0 anacron[9984]: Normal exit (1 job run)

So lvm-cleanup runned but not qubes-dom0-updates.cron!

Why?

Because qubes-dom0-updates.cron isn't executable (no exec bit).

Partial Workaround Solution

sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/qubes-dom0-updates.cron

After that the logs are:

Apr 12 17:46:01 dom0 anacron[45417]: Job `cron.daily' started
Apr 12 17:46:01 dom0 run-parts[51493]: (/etc/cron.daily) starting lvm-cleanup
Apr 12 17:46:01 dom0 run-parts[51498]: (/etc/cron.daily) finished lvm-cleanup
Apr 12 17:46:01 dom0 run-parts[51500]: (/etc/cron.daily) starting qubes-dom0-updates.cron
Apr 12 17:46:49 dom0 run-parts[51614]: (/etc/cron.daily) finished qubes-dom0-updates.cron
Apr 12 17:46:49 dom0 anacron[45417]: Job `cron.daily' terminated (produced output)
Apr 12 17:46:49 dom0 anacron[45417]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/sbin/sendmail, not mailing output
Apr 12 17:46:49 dom0 anacron[45417]: Normal exit (1 job run)

So now cron runs qubes-dom0-updates.cron.

But no update notification displayed in the tray bar whereas updates are available. So this is only a part of the solution. Maybe the next idea is #7417 or #6585 ...

Partial Solution

[user@dom0 ~]$ rpm -qf /etc/cron.daily/qubes-dom0-updates.cron
qubes-core-dom0-linux-4.1.18-1.fc32.x86_64

The qubes-dom0-updates.cron install with the exec bit in the qubes-core-admin-linux repo, rpm_spec/core-dom0-linux.spec file, 105 line:

- install -m 0644
+ install -m 0755

I will create the associated Pull Request...

[qubesos-bot]

Automated announcement from builder-github

The component core-admin-linux (including package qubes-core-dom0-linux-4.1.21-1.fc32) has been pushed to the r4.1 testing repository for dom0.
To test this update, please install it with the following command:

sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-dom0-current-testing

Changes included in this update

[qubesos-bot]

Automated announcement from builder-github

The component core-admin-linux (including package qubes-core-dom0-linux-4.1.21-1.fc32) has been pushed to the r4.1 stable repository for dom0.
To install this update, please use the standard update command:

sudo qubes-dom0-update

Or update dom0 via Qubes Manager.

Changes included in this update