The good news is the problem is reproducible. The bad news is APT::Periodic::Verbose "1" doesn't make unattended- upgrade produce any more output in its failure email:
Unattended upgrade returned: False Packages that attempted to upgrade: dh-apparmor libapparmor1 python3-update-manager update-manager-core Package installation log: Error in function: Unattended-upgrades log: Initial blacklisted packages: Starting unattended upgrades script Allowed origins are: ['o=Ubuntu,a=trusty-security', 'o=UbuntuESM,a=trusty', 'o=Ubuntu,a=trusty-security', 'o=Ubuntu,a=trusty-updates', 'origin=LP-PPA-pov,suite=trusty'] Packages that will be upgraded: dh-apparmor libapparmor1 python3-update-manager update-manager-core Writing dpkg log to '/var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades-dpkg_2018-02-13_03:07:51.796037.log' Installing the upgrades failed! error message: 'installArchives() failed' dpkg returned a error! See '/var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades-dpkg_2018-02-13_03:07:51.796037.log' for details Packages that are auto removed: '' Packages auto-removed Which is exactly the same thing I saw yesterday. I think I see my mistake: I should've set APT::Periodic::Verbose to "3" to have the cron script pass -d to unattended-upgrade! D'oh! On the other hand I got an extra email from cron.daily saying /etc/cron.daily/apt: verbose level 1 sleeping for 280 seconds check_stamp: interval=86400, now=1518559200, stamp=1518472800, delta=86400 (sec) apt-key net-update (failure) download updated metadata (success). send dbus signal (success) check_stamp: interval=0 download upgradable (not run) check_stamp: interval=86400, now=1518559200, stamp=1518472800, delta=86400 (sec) unattended-upgrade (success) check_stamp: interval=0 autoclean (not run) aged: ctime <30 and mtime <30 and ctime>2 and mtime>2 end remove by archive size: size=24256 < 512000 The "apt-key net-update (failure)" line is intriguing, but seems to be unrelated. I've bumped APT::Periodic::Verbose to "3" now and will see what happens next morning. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1721294 Title: Unattended upgrade fails with "Error in function" To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/+bug/1721294/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs