sleep doesn't work on Ubuntu 20.04 (WSL)

Question

After upgrading to 20.04 on WSL sleep doesn't work with an error:

sleep: cannot read realtime clock: Invalid argument

Solution 1

This is because of a bug in WSL1. Look here: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-20-04-and-wsl-1/15291

The upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 implements glibc 2.31. Unless you are on Insider you have not gotten the fix for issue 4989 yet and likely will not for a couple months. Without the fix things tend to break on Ubuntu 20.04 on WSL 1, sometimes even in the upgrade process 9 to Ubuntu 20.04. For example htop doesn’t work on Ubuntu 20.04 on unpatched WSL 1.

Solution 2

wget https://launchpad.net/~rafaeldtinoco/+archive/ubuntu/lp1871129/+files/libc6_2.31-0ubuntu8+lp1871129~1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg --install libc6_2.31-0ubuntu8+lp1871129~1_amd64.deb

sudo apt-mark hold libc6

sudo apt --fix-broken install

sudo apt full-upgrade

How to upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 on WSL Windows 10

Solution 3

Just had this problem and I replaced the /usr/bin/sleep binary with a python script that roughly replaces the functionality.

Backup /usr/bin/sleep and replace with the file with the following contents

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import sys
import time

time.sleep(int(sys.argv[1]))

Remember to chmod +x /usr/bin/sleep after replacing.

Solution 4

This command worked for me. use with root user privilege.

apt-mark hold libc6
apt --fix-broken install
apt full-upgrade

Solution 5

It's far from ideal but another workaround is to edit /var/lib/dpkg/info/libc6:amd64.postinst and comment out the set -e at the top of the script (insert a # as the first character in the line).

You will still receive the sleep: cannot read realtime clock: Invalid argument error but it will not cause the upgrade of the package to abort.

It's not ideal because:

1. A standard post-install script is modified.
2. The script change must be applied every time libc6 is upgraded.

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Comments

[Kulfy]

It seems that many of your answers consists the link how2shout.com. If you're the owner of that domain, please disclose your affiliation. See How to not be a spammer.

[C. Gonzalez]

... Doesn't that just replace /bin/sleep with an empty file? This is a terrible hack and is bound to break things in unexpected ways.

[Asfand Qazi]

Yeah, it may get you past some sticky situations, but sleep is a standard UNIX command and no doubt just replacing it with an empty file that does nothing is going to screw up a lot of things.

[Flimm]

Isn't a good idea to run sudo apt-mark unhold libc6 at the end?

[Ryan]

Those 3 commands didn't work for me until I prepended sudo to each, and only after running sudo apt-get update. Then they seemed to solve this problem. So I guess I'll +1.

[Ryan]

I'd prefer if this answer explained what that random .deb package is and what the risks are of installing it and whether (and how) it would be easy to revert back later.

[Ryan]

This looked interesting, but I got an error: sudo service supervisor start Starting supervisor: /bin/sleep: 1: read: Illegal option -n

[Ryan]

sudo cp -p /usr/bin/sleep /usr/bin/sleep.orig and sudo vim /usr/bin/sleep were helpful commands for me. I think your hack might be working for me, although in my Windows Task Manager, I see a php7.4 background process with "Very high" for "Power usage", and I don't know why.

[Ryan]

Actually, I don't think it worked for me, but I can't remove my upvote. Currently I'm hoping askubuntu.com/questions/1230252/… works.

[domenukk]

I needed to replace /bin/sleep instead, on my ubuntu installation.

[Lh Lee]

github.com/u-root/u-root/blob/master/cmds/core/sleep/sleep.g‌​o I used this instead as I needed support for seconds/minutes etc.