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Disconnection After Upgrading Ubuntu Environment

Behavior on Older Ubuntu Environments

On some older Ubuntu-based environments, running the command sudo apt update followed by sudo apt upgrade causes the virtual machine to disconnect during the upgrade process. A "disconnected" prompt will be presented while upgrading.

Even after reconnecting to the virtual machine, many of the packages will remain outdated because the upgrade was not completed.

Below is a list of environments likely affected by this behavior. Please note that this issue has been fixed in any 2022.8 or newer revision of our Ubuntu environments.

  • GNU-Radio TPMS
  • Laboratory Exercise - Host Based Network Security Basics - Part-1 & Part-2
  • Introduction to Forensics
  • Ubuntu 20.04
  • Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop and Ubuntu 20.04 Terminal
  • Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop
  • Ubuntu 18 LTS - XFCE
  • Ubuntu 18 XFCE and Ubuntu 18 SSH
  • Ubuntu with Snort and Other tools

If you are using one of these environments, and your environment is older than 2022.8, we have a workaround that will allow you to upgrade packages in our older Ubuntu environments.

Underlying Cause

During a package upgrade on certain Ubuntu virtual machines, one of the post-installation scripts for the ec2-hibinit-agent package restarts systemd-logind service. As a result, connection to the virtual machine will be dropped, and any open software will be killed.

Workaround to Allow Upgrades

Info

If you have already experienced a failed upgrade, this workaround will fix the problem, allowing you to upgrade packages. Alternatively, this can be used as a preventative measure to avoid an upgrade failure altogether.

To successfully upgrade the packages on older Ubuntu images, first run the following commands:

sudo sed -e '/restart\ systemd-logind.service/ s/^#*/#/' -i /var/lib/dpkg/info/ec2-hibinit-agent.p*

sudo apt -y remove ec2-hibinit-agent

This will permanently fix issues caused by this package and will allow you to upgrade your packages using the following commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Have a Question? Contact Support

We're here to help you. If you still have questions after reviewing the information above, please feel free to submit a ticket with our Support Team and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.