check-new-release process eating up resources on Ubuntu server 13.04

Question

A small Ubuntu 13.04 virtual machine instance I run in a cloud environment regularly becomes slow/unresponsive because of a proces called check-new-release. Is there any way to disable this process and maybe run it manually instead?

Solution 1

Try doing

apt-get remove ubuntu-release-upgrader-core

The script that you're seeing running is /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release, and removing the above package will remove that script completely.

A description of this package is:

ubuntu-release-upgrader-core - manage release upgrades

Solution 2

In the file /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades change Prompt=normal to Prompt=never.

You can also do this through the GUI, but that may not be appropriate for a virtual server.

You can do a manual check for a new release with do-release-upgrade

Comments

[Carl]

Same problem on an ordinary Ubuntu 13.10 install on a new machine. I already had Prompt=never set.

[Bjorn Thor Jonsson]

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to solve the problem; now I saw that process creep up again after I had changed the configuration and rebooted the machine.

[Kevin]

Me too, all my servers just had their cpu pegged for ~60 seconds by this process at the same time. Not cool! Also on digitalocean

[Ashton Honnecke]

This change did not fix the issue for me.

[IronEagle]

note: uninstalling this package can prompt the removal of several other necessary packages. You can also disable the script (by emptying / commenting out the contents), or, it might only be called by motd, in which case removing / commenting out 91-release-upgrade in /etc/update-motd.d could work.

[sarlacii]

FYI: On an old 14.04 machine: apt-get remove ubuntu-release-upgrader-core python3-update-manager REMOVED: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core update-manager-core python3-distupgrade python3-update-manager