LXD and Snap Auto-Update

LXD
1

Hi everyone,

i am using LXD installed with snap. Till 5 April 22 i wasn’t aware of the fact that snapd is doing auto-updates of all installed snaps. Since the LXD update to version 5, which broke my backup strategy of ‘lxc copy --refresh’ to a remote server, i think about disabling these auto-updates.

I mean this is an Administrators nightmare, unattended updates which could break a whole infrastructure overnight. This time only backups are not possible due to a bug, next time all containers are failing.

Is there a way, you can recommend, to disable updates ? I read about setting timers on snapd which will have to be reset via cron or disabling the snap store with a firewall. How do you handle this topic ?

regards,
Robert

2

Hi,

Actually, the cleanest way is to install and use a snap-store-proxy, where you’ll be able to override the version of snap packages for your host.

https://docs.ubuntu.com/snap-store-proxy/en/install

3

I believe the issue you may be hitting should be fixed now:

https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/10186

Also please take a look at this tutorial as it may help with managing the snap:

Thanks

4

You may also want to switch to the 5.0/stable LTS channel as this will receive fewer large updates.

5

We use a simple but effective trick. Add this to the top of your /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 api.snapcraft.io

You will need to comment that out whenever you want to use snap - but this will stop snap from “phoning home” and voila, no more auto updates

6

Thanks, sounds like an acceptable compromise, switching to a fixed stable branch and only receiving bugfixes and security patches

7

Yes, simple but effective but rejecting at the firewall would be better for me since i have a dozen lxd/snap installations.