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#1 2018-08-31 11:46:03

nightowl777
Member
Registered: 2014-12-01
Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

Hi Guys

I'm not sure what is causing this, and I'm hoping someone could shed some light on this.

I chose Archlinux because I got tired of M$ Windows machines/Samsung TVS/Google phones always "phoning home" every 5 minutes. No device should ever have to "phone home" every 5 minutes. I can still accept a device that contacts update servers once a week, but every 5 minutes is ridiculous and this is not allowed on my network.

I recently installed Pihole and noticed that every 5 minutes there is DNS query for www.archlinux.org. I do not have www.archlinux.org open on any browser, I checked the crontab of both my normal user account and that of the root account. The only thing in my crontabs remotely resembling arch linux is this one line:

10 4 * * * pacman -Syuw --noconfirm

That only runs at 04:10am and not every 5 minutes.

Does anyone know of any binaries on archlinux that would cause my Arch machine to "phone home". If not, does anyone know how to track down the specific binary that is causing this query to fire roughly every 5 minutes?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you



PS: Below just a small output of my query log:

2018-08-31 13:26:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:26:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 13:24:19 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:24:19 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 13:24:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:24:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.2ms)	
2018-08-31 13:21:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.2ms)	
2018-08-31 13:21:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:19:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:19:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 13:16:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (forwarded)	CNAME (8.3ms)	
2018-08-31 13:16:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 13:14:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.2ms)	
2018-08-31 13:14:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 13:11:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:11:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 13:09:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:09:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:06:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.2ms)	
2018-08-31 13:06:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:04:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:04:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:01:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 13:01:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:59:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP	
2018-08-31 12:59:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:56:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:56:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:54:01 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (forwarded)	CNAME (7.5ms)	
2018-08-31 12:54:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (forwarded)	CNAME (7.6ms)	
2018-08-31 12:51:57 	A	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (forwarded)	CNAME (8.0ms)	
2018-08-31 12:51:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:49:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (forwarded)	CNAME (8.3ms)	
2018-08-31 12:46:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:44:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:41:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:39:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:36:57 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)	
2018-08-31 12:34:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.2ms)	
2018-08-31 12:29:01 	AAAA	www.archlinux.org	xx.dynamic.adsl.xx	OK (cached)	IP (0.1ms)

Last edited by nightowl777 (2018-08-31 12:29:13)

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#2 2018-08-31 11:55:50

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,431

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … nnectivity

NetworkManager does a harmless ping to check if it's connected to the internet, so that it can adjust it's status (so that indicators or applications using NM to check for connectivity, get notified of an offline status)

Last edited by V1del (2018-08-31 11:57:34)

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#3 2018-08-31 12:04:33

ayekat
Member
Registered: 2011-01-17
Posts: 1,589

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

nightowl777 wrote:

The only thing in my crontabs remotely resembling arch linux is this one line:

10 4 * * * pacman -Syuw --noconfirm

That only runs at 04:10am and not every 5 minutes.

I also recommend not doing that, because the next time you run `pacman -S {package}`, you might very likely find yourself with a partially upgraded system. Not to mention the useless traffic this causes if you don't actually install all those downloaded packages.


pkgshackscfgblag

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#4 2018-08-31 12:28:50

nightowl777
Member
Registered: 2014-12-01
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

Thank you very much V1del. I just wanted to know what is causing it and now that I know, it's all good.

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#5 2018-08-31 12:40:37

nightowl777
Member
Registered: 2014-12-01
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

ayekat wrote:
nightowl777 wrote:

The only thing in my crontabs remotely resembling arch linux is this one line:

10 4 * * * pacman -Syuw --noconfirm

That only runs at 04:10am and not every 5 minutes.

I also recommend not doing that, because the next time you run `pacman -S {package}`, you might very likely find yourself with a partially upgraded system. Not to mention the useless traffic this causes if you don't actually install all those downloaded packages.

Where I'm from bandwidth in the day is very expensive and slow, but I do have an "afterhours discounted bandwidth" option. For that reason I download the packages only (-w option) at 4:10am, and then I run pacman -Su every day when I'm physically in front of the machine. I've never had a partially updated problem, and this arch installation is about 5 years old.

But you are right, I'm going to change it to only download every Wednesday and I'll make Wednesdays my "update day".

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#6 2018-08-31 13:48:44

progandy
Member
Registered: 2012-05-17
Posts: 5,184

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

If you are always running the update first thing in the morning, then everything is fine and you won't get partial updates. I might add a script that checks for not installed updates with "pacman -Qqu" during login and then reminds you to update.


| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' |

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#7 2018-08-31 13:59:58

ayekat
Member
Registered: 2011-01-17
Posts: 1,589

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

nightowl777 wrote:

Where I'm from bandwidth in the day is very expensive and slow, but I do have an "afterhours discounted bandwidth" option.

Hmm, I didn't actually think of that case, sorry. And if you always run -Su rather than just -S, you do indeed circumvent the partial upgrade problem.

I would perhaps use a separate package db location, though (not /var/lib/pacman/sync directly), and have pacman synchronise against the temporary/new db location. Not sure how cumbersome that is, though (this is just an uninformed suggestion from my side).
EDIT: of course this is not necessary if you continue using -Su smile

Last edited by ayekat (2018-08-31 14:01:06)


pkgshackscfgblag

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#8 2018-08-31 15:54:58

eschwartz
Fellow
Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: [SOLVED] Why does my machine contact www.archlinux.org every 5 min

V1del wrote:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … nnectivity

NetworkManager does a harmless ping to check if it's connected to the internet, so that it can adjust it's status (so that indicators or applications using NM to check for connectivity, get notified of an offline status)

Note also that Arch Linux explicitly disables any and all logging for that ping: https://git.archlinux.org/infrastructur … 288d6b39d1

We set your package to automatically check that url without your asking to, and therefore we won't log the data you send as a result.
It's also not a very interesting file to begin with unless we just wanted to collect IP addresses which we don't.

ayekat wrote:
nightowl777 wrote:

The only thing in my crontabs remotely resembling arch linux is this one line:

10 4 * * * pacman -Syuw --noconfirm

That only runs at 04:10am and not every 5 minutes.

I also recommend not doing that, because the next time you run `pacman -S {package}`, you might very likely find yourself with a partially upgraded system. Not to mention the useless traffic this causes if you don't actually install all those downloaded packages.

While it is possible to avoid partial updates by only using -Su and never -S, a safer, more robust approach is to use a temporary database just like checkupdates does. In fact, I've improved checkupdates to accept a new option:

    -d, --download        download pending updates to the pacman cache.

It can be seen here: https://git.archlinux.org/users/eschwar … 73ce07a952
I'm currently trying to push a patchset for pacman itself though, to allow using libmakepkg exclusively instead of m4 macros. Then I'll probably polish this up and submit it.

Last edited by eschwartz (2018-08-31 15:55:26)


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