update installation timing (was Re: Schedule for Monday's FESCo Meeting (2012-06-18))

[Stijn Hoop]

Hi,

On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 02:22:26 +0000 (UTC)
Ben Boeckel <mathstuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 13:19:13 GMT, Michal Hlavinka wrote:
> > I wonder if it would be possible to do it on shutdown instead of
> > during start up? I usually do not care if shutdown takes ten
> > seconds or five minutes, but when I start my computer I do so
> > because I want to use it and not wait several minutes before its
> > ready.
> 
> Hmm. I usually have the other problem, especially with laptops.
> Shutting down due to low battery only to have it wait to do updates
> while there's a chance the updates won't matter because it's going to
> crash soon is scarier than booting up and doing updates (presumably
> you have juice available when booting). There's also the "I need to
> be somewhere" case where shutting down fast is more important than
> booting fast (airplane take off, losing track of time before class,
> etc.).
> 
> Either way, it certainly isn't an obvious either-or issue. The obvious
> solution, to me, is to have mind-reading computers, but I think that
> may have one or two other consequences with it.

I agree that mind reading computers may not be the final answer, but I
do have a data point that might be helpful: we locally implemented
updates-at-reboot for a few years now. At first we had them on startup,
but now we do it at shutdown -- we made this change due to user
complaints as they did not mind the computer doing stuff when they went
away, but did mind longer wait times at the start of the {day,week,...}.

Note though that we only implemented this policy for desktop computers,
not for laptops. I agree that for a laptop, shutting down fast can be
necessary as well -- so maybe distinguishing on "on AC power" would be
a good substitute for mind reading as to when to run the actual updates?

--Stijn