Disabling automatic refresh for snap from store

[Ads20000]

@shadowjonathan

But canonical promotes snaps in Ubuntu server installs, meaning it officially endorses and recommends using it for server installs… while providing no extra control than users normally get. I am referring and arguing for the purpose of this usage, for the purpose of snaps being pushed onto admins, which’d then later on would encounter they don’t have control to stop a potentially breaking update over their systems, or have one breaking their systems on a (proverbial) Friday.

There’s two answers Canonical would give for this use case I think:

1. Outdated software puts both you and your users at risk, yet servers still run outdated software, hence taking the control out of your hands and protecting your users by forcing you to update the software occasionally, unless you hack around that design.
2. You can control when these updates are made from the snap commandline. Using refresh.timer, you can set it to just update once per month at a particular time, so that you can plan around the update. Once an update has been made you can also use refresh.hold to delay updates for the next 90 days.

Please could you specify a real use case where the a once a month refresh.timer and a 90 refresh.hold is not enough? If you can specify a real use case where this isn’t enough, I’m sure Canonical would be very happy to listen, that’s why this thread is still open.

I agree with others that if the workarounds and controls available don’t satisfy you then you need to find an alternative to snappy.

---

Do read Re-visiting update control on the desktop - #61 by popey if you haven’t already, I just read it now, it’s by a very well-respected Ubuntu community member and former (recent!) Canonical employee and summarizes the situation well.