Here is how you configure automatic (security) updates on Debian:
aptitude install unattended-upgrades
Here you can configure it:
nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
This could look like this:
Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern { "origin=Debian,archive=stable,label=Debian-Security"; }; Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist { // add packages here that need manual steps like this: // "vim"; } Unattended-Upgrade::AutoFixInterruptedDpkg "true"; Unattended-Upgrade::MinimalSteps "true"; Unattended-Upgrade::InstallOnShutdown "false"; Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "root"; Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true"; Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "true"; Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "false"; Acquire::http::Dl-Limit "200";
Now create the following file:
nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02periodic
With this content:
// Enable the update/upgrade script (0=disable) APT::Periodic::Enable "1"; // Do "apt-get update" automatically every n-days (0=disable) APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1"; // Do "apt-get upgrade --download-only" every n-days (0=disable) APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1"; // Run the "unattended-upgrade" security upgrade script // every n-days (0=disabled) // Requires the package "unattended-upgrades" and will write // a log in /var/log/unattended-upgrades APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1"; // Do "apt-get autoclean" every n-days (0=disable) APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
Of course the server needs to be able to send mails so it can send mails in case of problems.
You can test it like this:
# mail -s test mail@example.com My testmail . EOT
Hope this helps somebody.
Update: Some updates caused dpkg questions about changed config files and therefore failed.
For example php5-fpm did ask this:
Setting up php5-fpm (5.4.4-14+deb7u10) ... Configuration file `/etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf' ==> Deleted (by you or by a script) since installation. ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version. What would you like to do about it ? Your options are: Y or I : install the package maintainer's version N or O : keep your currently-installed version D : show the differences between the versions Z : start a shell to examine the situation The default action is to keep your current version. *** www.conf (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? dpkg: error processing php5-fpm (--configure): EOF on stdin at conffile prompt
This caused PHP5-FPM to stop and all PHP sites to show an Internal Server Errror…
So you don’t run into this problem, create /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/local with this content:
Dpkg::Options { "--force-confdef"; "--force-confold"; }
This tells DPKG to keep the old config file. It will create .dpkg-dist files with the package distributer’s version. More information on this can be found here.
Thanks for the article.
I followed all your steps. But it was not working. So I searched the web.
I had to make /etc/cron.daily/apt executable then it worked…
Comment by Nodohx — 28. October 2014 @ 08:18
[…] unattended-upgrades on UbuntuĀ 16.04 (and previous versions) set up to install updates on shutdown, […]
Pingback by flashplugin-installer cannot download files using unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu - Christosoft Blog — 28. June 2016 @ 10:29
[…] using the official third-party repository of mono in Debian, unattended Upgrades will not upgrade the mono packages unless you allow the origin. To do so, edit your […]
Pingback by Debian Unattended Upgrades: Upgrade Third Party mono packages - Christosoft Blog — 9. August 2018 @ 19:37