@Tim One is not supposed to crosspost.

If anyone wants to know whether bad things are going on in India, the answer is, yes. See, for example scroll.in/article/968949/…

and/or do a search for Hany Babu. This has been going on, but seems to be escalating.

Hi!

Does software-properties-gtk require sudo privilege for checking for updates?

@Pandya AFAIK it doesn’t check for updates, it only edits sources.list etc.

@StephenKitt ^^

@Pandya yes, that allows configuring update frequency and behaviour, it doesn’t update

@StephenKitt doesn't it check for updates which is equivalent to sudo apt update

I am actually wondering how software center check for updates without sudo privileges.

@Pandya software center is a different matter, it uses PackageKit

software-properties-gtk only edits the configuration, it doesn’t perform any updates etc.

@StephenKitt Hmm.. I see it prompts for sudo password for installing packages but not for checking for updates

@Pandya yes, it uses PackageKit

for example this is KDE's software center, known as Discover which can check for updates without sudo

is this equivalent to apt update?

as long as your not installing them, checking version should not need root priv.

@Pandya ultimately, yes; PackageKit is an abstraction layer on top

@Archemar this updates the local package lists in /var/apt/lists, it needs root

PackageKit is normally configured using PolicyKit to allow password-less updates

@StephenKitt Hmm. I got it. So, they're configured with PolicyKit. Thanks for the information :)

software-properties-gtk also needs to be root to be able to update settings, but it doesn’t run apt update itself

It's freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit, right?

@Pandya that’s PackageKit, yes

Cool

and PolicyKit (now known as polkit, but Debian 10 still uses PolicyKit) is gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit

Btw, do they use aptdaemon also as claimed here?

@Pandya check the date on that answer ;-)

@StephenKitt I had created a chat-room associated with U & L Meta when I had discovered Polkit for first time! Haha

@StephenKitt 2013

I can run pkcon get-updates without sudo, true!

@Pandya things have changed since then — aptdaemon was created because PackageKit wasn’t quite good enough, but PackageKit was improved and aptdaemon was dropped.

Would it be useful QA we post on site "How do software centers check for updates without sudo privileges?"

@Pandya You mean the underlying method that they use? If so, for which distributions?

@FaheemMitha I mean @StephenKitt 's answer providing information about packagekit would be useful.

@Pandya Does software center refer to some specific software, or does it refer to a class?

It seems to me that it would be the latter.

@FaheemMitha it’s the software manager that we often get questions about from Kali users wanting to install it

it’s used on Ubuntu

@StephenKitt So one specific thing?

but perhaps Pandya meant "GUI package managers" in general (Software Center, GNOME Software, the KDE equivalent, etc.)

If so, does it have a name more specific than software center?

@StephenKitt That would probably be a better question.

@StephenKitt Yes.

@Pandya In that case, I think it would be a reasonable question, if it does not already exist in the site.

@FaheemMitha see freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/pk-users.html

@Pandya I see it. So?

@FaheemMitha Used by GNOME as well as KDE software centers

@Pandya Oh. And what about other software centers?

I got a helpful reply to my Discourse question, though it mostly consists of a bunch of links.

Unfortunately, other forums don't just give the answer, like Stack Exchange does. They insist on trying to "educate" you.

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