cron-apt/log output

No, this is not expected - Thanks for reporting it!

Have you changed any of the configuration? Could you provide information on how to reproduce.

I installed TKL Mediawiki 2009.04 using the install to hard-disk option on VirtualBox 2.2.4 on OSX 10.5.7
Since I installed it on a laptop I did not want to leave it on at 4am to get the scheduled security updates I wanted to run it manually.

I ran $/usr/sbin/cron-apt
Then I went to webmin / system / system logs and searched for /var/log/cron-apt/log and clicked view. this is what I saw.

The only change I made was to do port forwarding thru VBox NAT so I could see the MediaWiki webpage like so.

VBoxManage setextradata "PubWik TKL" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/Protocol" TCP
VBoxManage setextradata "PubWik TKL" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/GuestPort" 80
VBoxManage setextradata "PubWik TKL" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/HostPort" 8080

I can successfully ping google from the VBox
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/1066/picture2qbh.png

Any response to failing updates? Here is what I get if I let the scheduled cron job run. I think updates do not work if NAT networking is used. That's unfortunate.

/var/log/cron-apt/log
Last lines of Only show lines with text
CRON-APT RUN [/etc/cron-apt/config]: Tue Jul 28 18:20:29 UTC 2009
CRON-APT SLEEP: 3050, Wed Jul 29 02:11:20 UTC 2009
CRON-APT ACTION: 0-update
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get update -o quiet=2
CRON-APT ACTION: 5-install
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get autoclean -q -y
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get dist-upgrade -q -y -o APT::Get::Show-Upgraded=true -o Dir::Etc::sourcelist=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/security.sources.list -o Dir::Etc::sourceparts=nonexistent -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confdef -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confold
E: There are problems and -y was used without --force-yes
CRON-APT RUN [/etc/cron-apt/config]: Tue Jul 28 18:22:09 UTC 2009
CRON-APT SLEEP: 3322, Wed Jul 29 02:22:24 UTC 2009
CRON-APT ACTION: 0-update
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get update -o quiet=2
CRON-APT ACTION: 5-install
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get autoclean -q -y
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get dist-upgrade -q -y -o APT::Get::Show-Upgraded=true -o Dir::Etc::sourcelist=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/security.sources.list -o Dir::Etc::sourceparts=nonexistent -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confdef -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confold
E: There are problems and -y was used without --force-yes

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for giving me a nudge on this, here are my findings:

- cron-apt is erroring out (by design) because apt asked a question, and did not receive an answer.
  the question was whether it was ok to downgrade the "mediawiki" package.

- why does apt want to downgrade mediawiki?
  - the version of mediawiki installed in 2009.04 is newer than the version in the security repository
  - but apt should never want to downgrade a package with the current configuration
  - I filed a bug report on this very issue a while back, I'll contact the apt dev team to get an update on the status
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/315175

- in the meantime, a simple workaround is to "hold" the currently installed mediawiki package.
  echo mediawiki hold | dpkg --set-selections

Again, thanks for reporting and following up on this issue.

O.k. glad it's not related to my config. at least.

Here's the output now after running the command you suggest.

CRON-APT RUN [/etc/cron-apt/config]: Wed Jul 29 09:56:07 UTC 2009
CRON-APT SLEEP: 1444, Wed Jul 29 17:20:12 UTC 2009
CRON-APT ACTION: 0-update
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get update -o quiet=2
CRON-APT ACTION: 5-install
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get autoclean -q -y

Is this the expected output?

check your network bandwidth monitor :)
its probably downloading about 80MB of updates...

btw, you can remove the "-q" from /etc/cron-apt/config/* to be more verbose.

yes, it is. thanks for the quick replies today!