Auto-updates are enabled on my system, but they’re so very unpredictable. Just now had one running, I was thinking “why is my PC lagging” until you hear a symphony of USB connect/disconnect sounds and you realise, “ohh, it was auto-update”.

So the question is, is there some kind of way to receive a notification when auto-update is running? Preferably with progressbar. Or maybe a way to get notifications when there are updates available? Thanks!

  • CorbinEnglish
    2·
    11 hours ago

    Can notifications be started from a systemd unit? Kind of. notify-send can be invoked from systemd, but getting the correct user notified is non-trivial and I’m not sure how it would be done on NixOS.

    Can nixos-rebuild have a progress bar? Not really. It’s not a process with a predictable end time.

    Can there be notifications when updates are available? There are scripts out there (like this one which I have never used) which can poll git repositories and run notify-send, but that’s not very useful. Instead, it’s worth knowing that most of the cost of auto-upgrade is running the nixos-rebuild command at all, even if there are no available upgrades!

    Instead, consider setting system.autoUpgrade.dates to a fixed time when you definitely won’t use the computer, and also set system.autoUpgrade.persistent. This will run auto-upgrade on boot in the worst case.

    Also, USB devices should not be disconnecting on every update. If USB disconnections happen under high load, check dmesg for possible hints; you may merely need to add an override to boot.kernelParams.