It seems that the gnome-settings-daemon 'updates' plugin is responsible for many of the packagekit updates, as 'gsd-updates-refresh' indicates:
#define PERIODIC_CHECK_TIME 60*60 /* poke PackageKit every hour */ I run rsyslog which receives messages from another machine which runs 2 desktop sessions (one native, one VNC) and do the updates faithfully in addition to some ad-hoc command line apt(itude) work, so didn't notice the one hour interval when I initially perused the logs. Upon initial viewing without knowing about the g-s-d updates plugin it just seemed like a storm of activations with no discernible source. If the one hour trigger from each of the g-s-d processes is sifted out of the messages, what is left might be attributed to dpkg and apt-get update post-invoke calls from '/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20packagekit'. OK to close this, and thank you for the hint about g-s-d and for your fine work with Debian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org