Do you feel it’s a hassle with all the new packages that needs updating?
Typing:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Almost every week you log in to Ubuntu. Upgrades and updates should be automated. It’s done very easy once and for all. Just continue reading.
The unattended-upgrades package is the best practice for automating the updating of Ubuntu. For headless machines like the WordPress JeOS VPS server, this is a major security gain and a great timesaver.
You can set up unattended-upgrades by typing this in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades
Then configure unattended upgrades using this command:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades
That’s all. Ubuntu will now update itself every day.
If unattended upgrades fail, then configure manually
If not working as needed. Open the configuration files and customize to fit your needs.
Documentation on how to customize the update and upgrade are available in the Ubuntu documentation.
You can not use this tool to upgrade from Ubuntu 14 to Ubuntu 16. It will only upgrade and update packages.
First, edit the config file:
sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
Change the values to look like this:
// Automatically upgrade packages from these (origin:archive) pairs
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
"${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-security";
"${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-updates";
"${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-proposed";
"${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-backports";
};
// List of packages to not update (regexp are supported)
// Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist {
// "libc6-i686";
// };
The second file to edit is this one:
sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic
Change it to look like this:
::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1"; APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1"; APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7"; APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
Automatic unattended updates for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Test if it already installed:
sudo unattended-upgrades --dry-run
Run the upgrade:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
Sending e-mail:
sudo apt install bsd-mailx
sudo apt install apt-listchanges
sudo nano /etc/apt/listchanges.conf
Change to:
email_address=t@tbt.biz
Postfix log
sudo nano /var/log/mail.log
Remove log
sudo rm /var/log/mail.log
Restart Postfix
sudo systemctl restart postfix
Flush e-mail queue
sudo postqueue -f
Sources
Set up automatic unattended updates for Ubuntu 20.04
Set Up Automatic Security Update (Unattended Upgrades) on Ubuntu
Set up automatic unattended updates for packages from ondrej
Using Unattended-Upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu
"LP-PPA-ondrej-php:${distro_codename}";