What is the significance of a held back update? When I ran an
update/upgrade cycle this morning three updates were "held back",
with no further explanation.

The packages held back were
raspberrypi-ui-mods 1.20250121
wf-panel-pi 0.92
wfplug-connect 0.11

Any insights about what's going on would be appreciated!

bob prohaska

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Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

What is the significance of a held back update? When I ran an
update/upgrade cycle this morning three updates were "held back",
with no further explanation.

What command(s) did you use?

The usual,
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

The packages held back were
raspberrypi-ui-mods 1.20250121
wf-panel-pi 0.92
wfplug-connect 0.11

Any insights about what's going on would be appreciated!

Historically it meant there was an unsatisfiable dependency. It could
mean that the depdency (or a suitable version of it) is completely unavailable, or that it’s available but for some reason not installable
or upgradable.

Currently it can also mean that the upgrade is being phased and it’s not your turn yet. I think the diagnostic for this is being improved.

It does seem that upgrades trickle in slowly, as advertised by the
"update available" icon. It seems as if there needs to be some
additional information offered on when to upgrade and/or reboot.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

What command(s) did you use?

The usual,
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

I would suggest using ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’, if upgrading manually, because:

(1) ‘apt upgrade’ will currently never remove a package, even if that’s
necessary to upgrade something else.

(2) ‘apt’ is permitted to meaning from version to version, so any advice
given about it today could be invalidated tomorrow.

It does seem that upgrades trickle in slowly, as advertised by the
"update available" icon. It seems as if there needs to be some
additional information offered on when to upgrade and/or reboot.

When to upgrade:

* I use https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades, which takes most of
the hassle out of it.

When to reboot:

* /var/run/reboot-required should be nonempty if you need a reboot.

* https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/needrestart should help with
reboot notifications.

* unattended-upgrades mentions any need to reboot in its email
notifications.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

What command(s) did you use?

The usual,
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

I would suggest using ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’, if upgrading manually, because:

(1) ‘apt upgrade’ will currently never remove a package, even if that’s
necessary to upgrade something else.

(2) ‘apt’ is permitted to meaning from version to version, so any advice
given about it today could be invalidated tomorrow.

It does seem that upgrades trickle in slowly, as advertised by the
"update available" icon. It seems as if there needs to be some
additional information offered on when to upgrade and/or reboot.

When to upgrade:

* I use https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades, which takes most of
the hassle out of it.

When to reboot:

* /var/run/reboot-required should be nonempty if you need a reboot.

* https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/needrestart should help with
reboot notifications.

* unattended-upgrades mentions any need to reboot in its email
notifications.

Thank you very much! I wasn't aware of the nuances you've presented.
For now /var/run/reboot-required doesn't exist. I'll start checking
it regularly.

bob prohaska

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Thank you very much! I wasn't aware of the nuances you've presented.
For now /var/run/reboot-required doesn't exist. I'll start checking
it regularly.

unattended-upgrades is telling me about has raspberrypi-ui-mods too (now
that I look at my cron mail). The answer is that other packages need to
be installed and removed in order to satisfy the new version’s
dependencies:

$ really apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
lxplug-network
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
lxplug-ptbatt
The following NEW packages will be installed:
lxplug-batt lxplug-cpu wfplug-batt
The following packages will be upgraded:
raspberrypi-ui-mods
1 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,113 kB of archives.
After this operation, 260 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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