Filed a bug about Discover 5.23.0 taking a long time fetching updates

[chimak111]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443809 based on https://www.reddit.com/r/kdeneon/com..._after_update/

The bug was marked as a duplicate of https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443555.

[claydoh]

As Discover updates Flatpak/Snap on top of normal apt repos, as well as KDE Store stuff, and hardware firmware updates too. Any one of these providers with a slow point will make Discover slow to update.
My first possible suspect is the KDE Store, being that it has been very flaky and slow af in recent months - . Second is actually KDE Neon's repo, which does not have a massive mirror system like Ubuntu does.


fwiw, I have no issues at the moment speed wise, with a slightly long refresh time the first time I used it after the upgrade on my PC. Quite a few theming bits I had installed from the store had updates.
My laptop saw zero issues in this area.

[chimak111]

Fair enough! I guess servers were seeing more activity than normal given the new releases all around. And I do remember complaints about Get New Stuff connectivity. At this moment, Discover's updates are snappy.

[claydoh]

Not discounting the bug, especially as it is not obvious where or how to check some of the places for the slowdown. Still could well be an actual bug to be sure.

[chimak111]

claydoh, as you pointed out in post #2, Discover draws on multiple sources for updating and so a comparison to terminal routes isn't appropriate.

I didn't have issues while testing Plasma 5.22.90 in Kubuntu 21.04 (KDE neon with Plasma 5.22.5) and so the delay came as a surprise.

Anyway, today at ~ 01.30 UTC, the delay was back.

The updates were for the vim ppa. So, rather than go the restart way, I closed Discover and ran pkcon refresh and pkcon update.

For the future, I'll first run the pkcon commands and, if there are updates, I'll open Discover.

EDIT: re. today's update, there were two delays: the first to get the updates available message in the lower left corner and the second to complete "fetching updates" in the RHS panel. The second delay is difficult to understand.

[chimak111]

Update: the bug has been marked as a duplicate of this. In that bug, the flatpak backend is the villain. Good idea to launch Discover from konsole!

I'll disable the flatpak option because that seems possible from Discover's settings and try again.

Incidentally, there's a mention of fwupd in konsole's output:

chimak@neon:~$ plasma-discover
kf.kirigami: Units.devicePixelRatio is deprecated (since 5.86 ): This returns 1 when using Qt HiDPI scaling.
adding empty sources model QStandardItemModel(0x562f14a7a590)
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover: Couldn't find a category for  "fwupd-backend"
file:///usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/qml/org/kde/kirigami.2/private/PrivateActionToolButton.qml:74:5: QML Binding: Binding loop detected for property "value"

[GreyGeek]

After the previous update of my Neon 5.22.3 system I noticed some slugginess. Slowness in GUI's displaying, etc.
Yesterday's update, 335 packages, came down the pipe and now I can't believe how much faster the system is. My systemd-analyse boot time is 4.80 seconds.
GUI's snap to the desktop almost instantly. Everything is faster. Love it!

[chimak111]

Well, Discover takes up to ~5 minutes to fetch updates due to flatpak backend has finally been confirmed.

[claydoh]

I wonder why not everyone is seeing this? I can't reproduce it myself, and the only times Discover has been dog slow recently has been from fetching KDE Store stuff.

Also, notice that using that trash icon is just removing that particular flatpak repo - it doesn't actually disable flatpak backend from running, but does of course keeps it from checking.
Has anyone tried updating flatpak specifically, from the commandline, and seen if it might actually be something like a very slow connection on that server, or an address in its pool, or other server issues

[chimak111]

claydoh, please see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444556. There, the OP ran some diagnostic steps suggested by a dev and maybe you'll make more sense of the results than I!

Yes, it's puzzling that most users don't see it at all whereas those of us who do, see the issue consistently.

[claydoh]

claydoh, please see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444556. There, the OP ran some diagnostic steps suggested by a dev and maybe you'll make more sense of the results than I!

Yes, it's puzzling that most users don't see it at all whereas those of us who do see the issue consistently.

This why I am thinking it may be a specific mirror that the core url for the flagtpak repo is sending people to, as I am sure there is a pool of them. It probably is a combination of things, for sure.

[marco07]

Yes, I have been experiencing this problem for a while now. The Discover stalls at "fetching the updates" with progress bar almost to the end of the bar. I have been using command line to complete the updates ever since.

BTW, the title to this topic says it is solved. I could not get what the solution is. Please clarify! Thanks!

[blue_bullet]

Yes, I have been experiencing this problem for a while now. The Discover stalls at "fetching the updates" with progress bar almost to the end of the bar. I have been using command line to complete the updates ever since.

BTW, the title to this topic says it is solved. I could not get what the solution is. Please clarify! Thanks!

Same problem here. Discover hangs on some Nvidia updates and freedom desktop.org or something like that.

I use a script in Konsole for most updates:

#!/bin/bash
# Does the same thing as update manager
# Updated 2021-04-09 @ 13:02:37 MDT by rob@sigma-changed apt-get to apt, changed upgrade to full-upgrade
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade

[claydoh]

Same problem here. Discover hangs on some Nvidia updates and freedom desktop.org or something like that.

I use a script in Konsole for most updates:

#!/bin/bash
# Does the same thing as update manager
# Updated 2021-04-09 @ 13:02:37 MDT by rob@sigma-changed apt-get to apt, changed upgrade to full-upgrade
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade

You can shorten that script, and remove the redundant sudo apt dist-upgrade, since it is quite literally just repeating the exact same process that apt full-upgrade does.

Also note that this does not update any Snap or flatpak applications one may have installed.

[blue_bullet]

You can shorten that script, and remove the redundant sudo apt dist-upgrade, since it is quite literally just repeating the exact same process that apt full-upgrade does.

Also note that this does not update any Snap or flatpak applications one may have installed.

I did not know that. Thanks for the tip, Claydoh. I will change my script:

#!/bin/bash
# Does the same thing as update manager
# Updated 2021-04-09 @ 13:02:37 MDT by rob@sigma-changed apt-get to apt, changed upgrade to full-upgrade
#sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade
# Updated 2021-10-30 @ 14:51:01 MDT by rob@sigma-removed apt dist-upgrade as it is redundant with apt full-upgrade.
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade