Score:0

21.10: "Updates Available" on metered network connections

bd flag

When my phone is tethered and shares its internet connection, that network configuration has a checked checkbox that indicates it has limited data and can incur costs, and that no automatic updates will happen on it.

Despite this the apparently unavoidable "updates are available" window pops up, asking me if I don't want to download 3.3 MB of updates after all...

Let's pretend that I don't believe it would've asked me even if the download size had been 3.3 GB: No, 3 MB isn't that much, until you realize that the equivalent of apt update must have been run to offer me the updates — a command which doesn't seem to have any reservations against consuming ~30 MB in and of itself.

Am I misunderstanding something, or are the metered network settings just not respected? Potentially tens of MB just to check whether an update exists seems incredibly irresponsible on metered connections.

user535733 avatar
cn flag
The metered network settings ARE respected for actual deb and snap package downloads -- your system won't secretly download those 3GB of deb and snap packages upgrades. However, you're right -- the system will still check to see if any upgrades *are available*. As far as I can tell after a cursory search, nobody has requested disabling apt updates when using metered connections. Please file a bug report.
bd flag
@user535733 Thank you for taking the time. Sounds reasonable, I'll consider doing that. I've gotten so used to Ubuntu ignoring the "auto check updates: never" preference (which was set to Never at the time) that I'm not very confident of any part of the auto-update process
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