Bug in Rust-Based Uutils Broke Ubuntu 25.10 Automatic Update Checks

'Ubuntu's decision to switch to Rust-based coreutils in 25.10 hasn't been the smoothest ride,' writes the blog OMG Ubuntu, 'as the latest — albeit now resolved — bug underscores.'

[Coreutils] are used by a number of processes, apps and scripts, including Ubuntu's own unattended-upgrades process, which automatically checks for new software updates. Alas, the Rust-based version of date had a bug which meant Ubuntu 25.10 desktops, servers, cloud and container images were not able to automatically check for updates when configured. Unattended-upgrades hooks into the date utility to check the timestamp of a reference file of when an update check was last run and, past a certain date, checks again. But date was incorrectly showing the current date, always.

A fix has been issued so only Ubuntu 25.10 installs withrust-coreutils 0.2.2-0ubuntu2 (or earlier) are affected.

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