1y ago

Update handling after rebasing Fedora Silverblue

So I am trying out fedora silverblue and recently rebased it to uBlue to get access to hardware decoding for non-free codecs and for some QoL improvements. Before rebasing, I used to get both system updates(update to image that silverblue is based on) and flatpak updates through the gui package manager(gnome-software in this case) but since i rebased, i was not getting any notifications for system updates. I ran rpm-ostree upgrade and then it pulled from the manifest and updated the system using the updated image. For some reason gnome-software did not know this new image was available.

My question is does this mean that i will have to run rpm-ostree upgrade to update from now or will gnome-software handle it? I have no problem using the terminal but gnome-software is more convenient and I am lazy.

14 comments

I think Ublue is only set to automatically check for updates once per day. If there were only a few updates available, it's possible your system just didn't check yet that day.
See if your /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf has automatic updates set to "stage." I think that should be the default.
See update section in this FAQ, which tells you what config disables automatic updates.
- It is already set to stage so i am guessing updates should be applied. But is there anyway to check that this actually happens. Or do have have to wait a few days and see that if the base image has changed by using the rpm-ostree status -v command?
  
  I guess so. I hit the grub menu when booting and I see the image version changing there as well.

One of the main features of silverblue is auto updates in the background. You don't need a cronjob or a graphical tool to achieve this, it's build into the distribution.
Have a look here: https://miabbott.github.io/2018/06/13/rpm-ostree-automatic-updates.html
You just have to change one entry in /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf and reload the systemd service.
- Does that work even for the OCI images that ublue uses¿? Also can we configure this further. I don't want to accidentally update my image when on a metered connection.
  
  I only used ublue images for a little bit but on the one which offered xfce at that time it was available. I think it's part of the main image design, so I see no reason it not being available. You can easily check tho.
  
  Someone just merged some shortcuts to let you turn them on and off easier: https://github.com/ublue-os/config/commit/0823567237f8d83a50a75e9a7cd15c7c9d758d22

Looks expected:
https://github.com/ublue-os/main/issues/191
Ublue uses OCI images, I don’t think Silverblue does. Last time I used Ublue even rpm-ostree couldn’t do “check” but it looks like upstream has fixed that at least.
- Unfortunate but understandable. uBlue delivers images in a different way as opposed to silverblue. Great project though and one I will recommend to anybody

I thiink, sudo systemctl enable NAME OF SERVICE
they have an automatic updater service, anyone knos the name?
Edit: other people already mentioned the rpm-ostree native way, which is better.
Btw, do you know how then to disable the update check / module in Discover? I find it weird to have it check always, and also to search for big GUI apps there is kinda not the purpose, although sometimes necessary

More than like likely yes, although you shouldn't have to and this is not expected behavior. Same thing happened to me with Kinoite. Twice. I still got flatpak upgrades through Discover but no longer system upgrades, or the system upgrades would appear but error out. I just decided to not rebase anymore after the third reinstall and use toolbox for everything that didn't have a flatpak available.

Unfortunately I have no idea why your updates have stopped working.
As for having to run the upgrade command, have you considered using cronie to run the command on a schedule for you?
Here's a decent guide for it if you wanted to look into it as a bandaid fix.
- Thanks I will look into it

14 comments