stop being nice does not work

I was able to confirm this by downgrading the version of apache2 installed to the one from the -release pocket and then running unattended upgrades:

 5867 root 39 19 284732 15232 9748 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.04 apache2
 5871 www-data 39 19 284764 5916 420 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2
 5872 www-data 39 19 284764 5916 420 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2
 5873 www-data 39 19 284764 5916 420 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2
 5874 www-data 39 19 284764 5916 420 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2
 5875 www-data 39 19 284764 5916 420 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2

Thanks for bringing this up.

Hello Harald, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into trusty-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/0.82.1ubuntu2.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Hello Harald, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into utopic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/0.82.8ubuntu0.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Tried the trusty version 0.82.1ubuntu2.1, works fine :-)
(Sorry, no utopic here ATM.)

Cheers
 Harry

tags:added: verification-done-trusty

(Oops, sorry, I may have messed around with the Status trying to update the Tag.)

FYI: Opened a corresponding Debian bug:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=778769

The fix was already merged upstream for what it is worth.

https://github.com/murraybd/unattended-upgrades/tree/lp-bug-1422345

Thank you (sorry, should have asked before). Do you think that it is best for me to close the Debian bug report?

Given that the changelog entry has already been written and doesn't include a debian bug reference I think it'd be best to close and maybe include the changelog entry.

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 0.83.5

---------------
unattended-upgrades (0.83.5) unstable; urgency=medium

  [ Brian Murray ]
  * properly restore niceness (LP: #1422345)

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Feb 2015 15:06:58 +0100

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 0.82.1ubuntu2.1

---------------
unattended-upgrades (0.82.1ubuntu2.1) trusty-proposed; urgency=medium

  *Properly remove the niceness given. (LP: #1422345)
 -- Brian Murray <email address hidden> Tue, 17 Feb 2015 14:32:54 -0800

The verification of the Stable Release Update for unattended-upgrades has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

stgraber indicates this is causing issues in lxc containers:

11:14 < stgraber> bdmurray: your unattended-upgrade SRU
                  is making all my containers crash
                  once an hour ;)
11:14 < bdmurray> stgraber: hunh?
11:15 < stgraber> you can't set negative nice values in
                  an unprivileged LXC container even if
                  you're root inside it
11:15 < stgraber> so now every time unattended-upgrade
                  runs (in my case every hour), it
                  crashes on that os.nice call
11:18 < stgraber> what we've done in other tools (like
                  systemd) is make this non-fatel if
                  the error is EACCES (typical for
                  unprivileged containers) or EPERM
                  (typical for apparmor preventing it)
11:19 < bdmurray> stgraber: but then wouldn't bug
                  1422345 still happen?
11:22 < stgraber> bdmurray: sure, the bug would still
                  happen in this case
11:23 < stgraber> bdmurray: root in a userns has the
                  same rights as a regular user with
                  regard to process priorities
11:23 < stgraber> bdmurray: and as a regular user, you
                  can increase the niceness but never
                  decrease it
11:24 < bdmurray> would it better to first try
                  decreasing and only increase it if
                  decreasing works?
11:25 < stgraber> yep, that'd be a good trick
11:25 < stgraber> so -1, if that works then 20,
                  otherwise keep is it is

The discussed changes were merged upstream:

https://github.com/mvo5/unattended-upgrades/commit/ca3014220ce93717806353cf2c5cb7f3661c4e33

I've uploaded the improvements for this to the utopic and trusty queues.

Hello Harald, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into utopic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/0.82.8ubuntu0.2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Hello Harald, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into trusty-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/0.82.1ubuntu2.2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Tried the newest trusty version 0.82.1ubuntu2.2, on hardware, works fine :-)
I leave the verification-needed flag since the test should also be done in a container.

Cheers
 Harry

Works fine in an unprivileged container. Thanks!

I can confirm, worked fine in my LXC containers.

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 0.82.8ubuntu0.2

---------------
unattended-upgrades (0.82.8ubuntu0.2) utopic-proposed; urgency=medium

  * Handle the situation where you may not be able to decrease process
    niceness e.g on an LXC container. (LP: #1422345)
 -- Brian Murray <email address hidden> Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:03:10 -0800

Tested on unprivileged Docker container (Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS) and confirmed that it worked fine.

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 0.82.1ubuntu2.2

---------------
unattended-upgrades (0.82.1ubuntu2.2) trusty-proposed; urgency=medium

  * Handle the situation where you may not be able to decrease process
    niceness e.g on an LXC container. (LP: #1422345)
 -- Brian Murray <email address hidden> Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:03:10 -0800