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A small Ubuntu 13.04 virtual machine instance I run in a cloud environment regularly becomes slow/unresponsive because of a proces called check-new-release. Is there any way to disable this process and maybe run it manually instead?

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    Same problem on an ordinary Ubuntu 13.10 install on a new machine. I already had Prompt=never set.
    – Carl
    May 9, 2014 at 20:46

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Try doing

apt-get remove ubuntu-release-upgrader-core

The script that you're seeing running is /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release, and removing the above package will remove that script completely.

A description of this package is:

ubuntu-release-upgrader-core - manage release upgrades
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    note: uninstalling this package can prompt the removal of several other necessary packages. You can also disable the script (by emptying / commenting out the contents), or, it might only be called by motd, in which case removing / commenting out 91-release-upgrade in /etc/update-motd.d could work.
    – IronEagle
    Oct 17, 2020 at 17:28
  • FYI: On an old 14.04 machine: apt-get remove ubuntu-release-upgrader-core python3-update-manager REMOVED: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core update-manager-core python3-distupgrade python3-update-manager
    – sarlacii
    Mar 15, 2022 at 7:50
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In the file /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades change Prompt=normal to Prompt=never.

You can also do this through the GUI, but that may not be appropriate for a virtual server.

You can do a manual check for a new release with do-release-upgrade

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    Unfortunately this doesn't seem to solve the problem; now I saw that process creep up again after I had changed the configuration and rebooted the machine.
    – Bjorn Thor Jonsson
    Aug 19, 2013 at 6:56
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    hmm, I gave the answer a point up, but had to take it back. I'll wait and see and then come back. I'm in the same boat, no GUI because it's a virtual server on digital ocean.
    – Thufir
    Feb 8, 2014 at 7:09
  • Me too, all my servers just had their cpu pegged for ~60 seconds by this process at the same time. Not cool! Also on digitalocean
    – Kevin
    Mar 18, 2014 at 23:03
  • This change did not fix the issue for me.
    – Ashton Honnecke
    Oct 26, 2015 at 15:21
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It is a pain on low RAM servers and 'Prompt=never' did not work for me on Ubuntu 18.04 so what I did (exit code 1 means NO_RELEASE_AVAILABLE):

mv /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade.bak;
echo -n 'import sys; sys.exit(1);' > /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade
chmod 755 /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade
# chattr +i  /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade
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