Automatic download and upgrade of packages In Debian/Ubuntu

April 28, 2010 at 8:30 pm | DEBIAN/UBUNTU, HOW-TOS | 1 comment

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The apt package comes with its own cron script “/etc/cron.daily/apt” to support the automatic download of packages. This script can be enhanced to perform the automatic upgrade of packages by installing the unattended-upgrades package. These can be customized by parameters in “/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02backup” and “/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades” as described in “/usr/share/doc/unattended-upgrades/README”.

The unattended-upgrades package is mainly intended for the security upgrade for the stable system. If the risk of breaking an existing stable system by the automatic upgrade is smaller than that of the system broken by the intruder using its security hole which has been closed by the security update, you should consider using this automatic upgrade with configuration parameters as the following.

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

If you are running an unstable system, you do not want to use the automatic upgrade since it certainly breaks system some day. Even for such unstable case, you may still want to download packages in advance to save time for the interactive upgrade with configuration parameters as the following.

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";

Related posts:

1. Purge Removed Packages On Ubuntu/Debian
2. Recording and copying system configuration in Debian/Ubuntu
3. Basic Package Management Operations Using Aptitude
4. Using The Debian Alternatives System

Tags: apt, upgrade

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 8:30 pm and is filed under DEBIAN/UBUNTU, HOW-TOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.