Ubuntu – Terminate and Disable Unattended Upgrades Before Command Returns

I'm having an issue here where I try to automate a setup with Ansible.

Some of the steps require interaction with apt, but occasionally I get an error because unattended-upgrade kicked off and locked apt. This will make the playbook stop.

I've tried many ways around this, the most successful being the repetition of a failed apt command.

But this does not scale, is also not 100% reliable and feels bad.

I've opted to issue an apt -y purge unattended-upgrades right at the beginning of the playbook. I also tried apt -y remove unattended-upgrades, but that one seems to return while it is still at work. Purging appears to shut down unattended upgrades as before it exits, which is what I want.

But it turns out that even that call to apt -y purge unattended-upgrades can fail due to locking. So I changed it to while [[ $(dpkg -l | grep -P "unattended-upgrades" | wc -c) -ne 0 ]]; do apt -y purge unattended-upgrades; done, but also that fails occasionally (I can't figure out why)

I need one command which, when executed, will terminate and bury unattended upgrades immediately, regardless if it is running or not, and make the guarantee that it won't start anymore as soon as that command returns, until I explicitly apt install it again. It is ok if that command takes a minute to finish it's job.

Also, the system doesn't have Python installed, so Ansible is only issuing raw commands, until I manage to install Python which should be after a successful call to apt -y update

I am in a state where I can trigger unattended upgrades easily, since this is a VM, and as soon as I issue a date -s command to correct the stale date, unattended-upgrade kicks in. After starting the VM, I have a couple of minutes until date corrects itself automatically which then starts unattended-upgrades.

This is what I'm doing now:

- name: Disable autoupdate (part 1 of 2)
  raw: sed -i /Update/s/"1"/"0"/ /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic && sync

- name: Disable autoupdate (part 2 of 2)
  raw: echo 'APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";' >> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic && sync

- name: Terminate any active autoupdate
  raw: ps -A | grep unattended-upgrades | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -r kill -15 $1

- name: Terminate any active dpkg
  raw: ps -A | grep dpkg | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -r kill -15 $1

- name: Allow dpkg to recover
  raw: dpkg --configure -a

- name: Purge autoupdate
  raw: apt -y purge unattended-upgrades    

- name: Update apt cache
  raw: apt -y update

- name: If needed, install Python
  raw: test -e /usr/bin/python || apt -y install python

Terminating dpkg is what creeps me out. All that is run on a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 18.04.1

Here is the solution created by using the accepted answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/51919678/277267