Updates installing *during* boot

[sylerner]

I've been using Kubuntu to a few years, making use of unattended updates.

While I have obviously had updates that required a reboot afterwards (e.g., kernel updates), I recently started seeing a new behavior that has me wondering if I've picked up a rootkit or other malware.

I will get reboot required notifications at times other than when I have unattended updates schedule to run. When I reboot, I see installation messages *during* the boot process. I have never seen this happen in the past.

Is this a new, legitimate behavior? Or has my system been compromised?

And if it is a legitimate behavior, why the change?

Thank you for your help in advance.

[Beerislife]

The answer is in this thread:

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...eon-compatible

[sylerner]

I see that this is present in Neon, which is a bit of a relief that I'm not the only one with this behavior.

My question remains though. Is this normal for the current version of *Kubuntu*?

I just discovered that the option for offline updates has been added to system settings. However, *it's currently turned off* and I'm still seeing updates during boot.

Thanks again.

[GreyGeek]

You can use muon to check and see if you have installed apt-offline and apt-offline-gui. If you have, mark them for purge and apply.
Then reboot.

[sylerner]

You can use muon to check and see if you have installed apt-offline and apt-offline-gui. If you have, mark them for purge and apply.
Then reboot.

They are not installed.

[GreyGeek]

They are not installed.

Mmm... Then my assumption that they were related to the offline option in System Settings is wrong.

That got me to thinking about pkcon (PackageKit CONsole client), since a lot of the info I saw referred to "pk-offline...", etc...
From "man pkcon":

offline-get-prepared
Print information about the prepared offline update. If no offline update is prepared, exit with an exit code of 1.

offline-trigger
Trigger an offline update.

offline-status
Print information about the result of the last offline update.

Should have thought of pkcon before. However, it gives no indication as to what pkg is responsible for adding the offline update option to System Settings. Still searching..

EDIT: I believe Claydoh solved the problem in this post.

From his first link:

Starting today if you use Discover to update your KDE neon Unstable installation, instead of immediately applying the update it will download the package and notify you that you need to restart to complete the update. Upon starting the next time the update is finally applied.
...
Any other package management front end will not perform offline updates. This most notably also includes the terminal interfaces pkcon and apt-get. Application distribution systems such as flatpak and snap are equally unaffected by this because they generally are not able to break the same way as system software can.

You can still choose to prepare an offline update using pkcon if you prefer using the terminal:
pkcon update --only-download && pkcon offline-trigger

I suspect the key app here is Discover. I don't like Discover, snap or flatpack so the first thing I did after installing KDE Neon was to remove those, which is probably why that "offline update" option is missing from my System Settings.