[packagekit] Debian apt-get 'all upgrades installed' hook?

[Patrick Schleizer]

Matthias Klumpp:
> Hi!
> 
> 2015-08-07 1:18 GMT+02:00 Patrick Schleizer <patrick-mailinglists at whonix.org>:
>> Hi!
>>
>> Would it be possible to use packagekit to provide an 'all upgrades
>> installed' hook?
>>
>> In other words, can packagekit notice and react if a user has
>> successfully 'apt-get dist-upgrade'ed? I.e. when no more upgrades are
>> available for installation?
> 
> What would be the use-case for that / what are you wanting to achieve?
> We have a hook for APT in Debian which notifies PK whenever the cache
> is updated.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Matthias

Hi Matthias!

I am a contributor to Qubes, which is a distribution of Xen that is
providing Debian templates. (And I am also the one who got Whonix, a
derivative of Debian, started.)

The inter VM / host communication is not our issue. There is a working
infrastructure for that. [qrexec]

The Qubes VM manager - that is running on dom 0 (speak: "the host") -
has a graphical state indicator "Updates pending!". (How we learn, that
updates are pending, is not part of this question.)

Now, when the user applied these updates (for example by running "sudo
apt-get dist-upgrade"), we would like the VM to dispatch a hook. An
apt-get 'all upgrades have been successfully installed' hook. It would
run a script calling qrexec which would essentially tell Qubes VM
manager "Updates were installed. Remove the updates pending indicator."

Github discussion. [1]

Cheers,
Patrick

[1] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1066