[TriLUG] Automatic system updates

[Neil Roeth]

On Aug 12, Rick DeNatale (rick.denatale at gmail.com) wrote:
 > For the debian-based (and particularly Ubuntu) users in the group, I
 > was wondering what if any automatic system update procedures you might
 > be using.
 > 
 > Does anyone use the cron-apt package or other means for automatically
 > updating their systems?  What  are the issues?

I would never completely automate upgrading my system, too dangerous.
However, I have the following in my /etc/apt/apt.conf file:

APT::Default-Release "unstable";
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists 1;
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages 1;
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval 0;

This, along with the file /etc/cron.daily/apt that the apt package provides,
updates the package lists and downloads the upgraded packages every day, but
does not clean out the apt repository.  I have to manually do the apt-get
dist-upgrade, but I always want to control when that happens anyway.  And when
I do it, all the packages have already been downloaded so I do not need to
wait.

I also modified the cron file by removing the -qq option so that it produces
some output, which gets mailed to me, like all cron output. Then as I go
through my email, I see what would be upgraded, which helps me decide when it
is worth doing.

-- 
Neil Roeth