update manager should warn about laptop running on battery when installing big updates

That's a good idea. It might be good if this was at a low enough level in apt that aptitude, and even apt-get, could prompt, too. (or just warn if non-interactive).

 Download speed is very hard to predict, and could take a _really_ long time. So it would be smart to check battery status after download but before install. Alway warn at that point if you're on batteries, but if there is lots of battery left and few updates, don't hold up the process by waiting for user input.

 A good heuristic might be: Get time until battery-critical shutdown (from ACPI on PC hardware...). Estimate update install time very conservatively (in case of slow discs and/or competing I/O load) as 5s per package + 10s per uncompressed MB. (made-up numbers, not based on any measurements.) Some packages have time-consuming post-install scripts; another reason for a conservative estimate.

  If install time > (battery - 10min), wait for user confirmation. This is after download. But always warn when on battery before starting to download, in case the user goes away right after starting the download.

 The extra heuristics for forcing user confirmation before actually installing when on battery may be excessive, but a forced shutdown during an update could cause a really big problem. (most laptops support suspend or hibernate, but some may resort to shutdown -h now.)

Searching for updates while on battery power in the first place sounds like a bad idea to me.

Further to this it may be wise to look at how Update-Manager interacts with power management. When Update Manager is active, it prevents the system from entering 'Suspend'.

I can understand this - say the updates being applied could potentially prevent suspend from working. However it actually makes this paper cut much more severe since you can wind up in a state where you started an upgrade, ran out of power and then couldn't even suspend and resume later to complete it!

This sounds like we also should not auto open update-manager if the system is running on battery.

Michael and I just discussed this, and decided that it shouldn't affect the auto-opening behavior, because that would mean people who only ever use a computer while it's on battery (and charge it while it's suspended/off) would never be notified.

This bug was fixed in the package update-manager - 1:0.124

---------------
update-manager (1:0.124) karmic; urgency=low

  * AutoUpgradeTester:
    - add kubuntu, main-all, lts-server, lts-ubuntu profiles
  * ported to gtkbuilder
  * UpdateManager/UpdateManager.py:
    - warn if running on battery (LP: #377697)
    - make it less stealty by setting the stick() property if
      run in auto-open mode (LP: #369820)

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:11:07 +0200

I know this bug is closed, but can the wording on this notification be changed? Right now the user is notified that they are running on battery, but are not told what the dangers are if the battery runs out.

I just had my machine enter suspend while I was running the Karmic upgrade. This is a brand new machine, and I copied ~/ over from my old machine in 9.04, then started a distribution upgrade via update-manager. Came back a couple hours later and it had suspended. Is distribution upgrade separate from update-manager? Does it inhibit suspend?

Any chance of an option in preferences to hide the irritating confirmation box that has resulted from this paprcut for those of us that don't have soap suds for brains and are well aware that our netbooks are running on the battery?

The warning was introduced at an inappropriate place: it should appear when you choose to install updates, not when Update Manager opens in the first place.

This will be fixed in a forthcoming redesign of Update Manager.

2009/11/26 Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden>:
> The warning was introduced at an inappropriate place: it should appear
> when you choose to install updates, not when Update Manager opens in the
> first place.
>
> This will be fixed in a forthcoming redesign of Update Manager.

But even then, there should be an option to turn this warning off.
(a tick "do not show this anymore" or something in software sources options)

--
## Przemysław Kulczycki >><< Azrael Nightwalker ##
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There still don't seem to be any improvements on this functionality, including the "disable" option on this annoying warning. I am running 10.04 and the update-manager is in version 0.134.8

Then please report a bug about that, citing the relevant part of the specification. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdateHandling#alert> Thanks.