Trying to refresh updates on Fedora fails with "[*/*/*/fedora-pkgdb-collections/*] The file was externally modified"
In openQA testing of the 42-rc update on Fedora 36, the test of updating the system with GNOME Software fails. The test installs the new GNOME packages, reboots, installs a dummy low-versioned python3-kickstart package, runs GNOME Software, goes to the Updates tab, and hits refresh. Shortly after that, the error [*/*/*/fedora-pkgdb-collections/*] The file was externally modified
appears. The system logs similarly show:
Mar 09 16:08:32 fedora gnome-software[1764]: failed to refresh: [*/*/*/fedora-pkgdb-collections/*] The file was externally modified
The openQA test does not touch any such file.
I'm assuming this is related to the recent changes @pwithnall made to plugins/fedora-pkgdb-collections/gs-plugin-fedora-pkgdb-collections.c
to make it more async and remove some locking.
Edited by Adam Williamson