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Using Ubuntu, I have a habit of running:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

on every startup. But for a month, I guess, there have been no updates whatsoever. The message shows:

All packages are up to date

Now I am starting to worry. Can there be a fault in my update manager? As far as I know, I've made no changes to the package manager settings. But no updates for almost a month seems kind of weird. Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks.

BeastOfCaerbannog
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Aman Kumar
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    Check your mirror is up-to-date, ie. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors If your mirror is listed as unknown, it means the counter of days since last update has overflowed, and your should switch mirror. (sudo apt update will provide details of your mirror, and you should mention your release as that would lead to potentially different responses to what I've provided here) – guiverc Jan 01 '21 at 06:59
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    Does this answer your question? How comes that a mirror can be "one week behind"? – guiverc Jan 01 '21 at 07:00
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    What version of Ubuntu are you running? – marcelm Jan 01 '21 at 15:40
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    Related: https://askubuntu.com/q/1303520/243321 – Organic Marble Jan 01 '21 at 18:47
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    I've seen several similar questions on [so] and some other sites as well. It is quite interesting to realize how many people have never heard about Christmas, but of course it makes sense when you think about it: why would you know about Christmas in non-Christian countries? – Jörg W Mittag Jan 02 '21 at 08:30

2 Answers2

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Lots of people ask this question between mid-December and the first week of January when a lot of the development team steps away from the keyboard to enjoy some time doing other things, like spend time with family. Updates generally resume around the 10th of January most years so long as there are not major security vulnerabilities discovered over the holidays. If you haven't seen anything by January 15th, then it's time to investigate.

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Updates get published at various sites, so why not monitor such a site.

I work with the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, the last issue UWN #633 has a very clear

Security Updates

No activity this period.

A single mutter update was listed for that week for focal/20.04, but if you don't have mutter installed you won't have had that updated package.

There were many more the week before (UWN #622), but you can check yourself (it's a weekly publication, and you know your release)

The latest release usually has the most updates (that's groovy/20.10, of course ignoring development/hirsute). Older stable releases get fewer generally (only back-ported security updates)

If it worries you, you can always scan the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter at the Ubuntu Fridge / UbuntuForums / wiki & other places where it's posted.

In the end, we all need to check it ourselves, as we tend to change the packages we have installed (you will also know your release, as you didn't say - I don't know it, so used focal as example as it was the release of another question).

I'm using Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter as example of a place you can check, selecting it because it's one I'm very aware of being involved with it since 2015, but it's not the only source for such information.

guiverc
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  • Thanks for telling me such a place exists! Been using Ubuntu for over an year now and still didn't know about it LOL! XD – Aman Kumar Jan 02 '21 at 06:58