Comments on: Automatic update of packages using cron-apt

By: raoul

raoul — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:41:56 +0000

You should probably use apt::periodic provided by apt instead of relying on an additional package to do the job.

check /etc/cron.daily/apt for options and this page: https://saz.sh/2009/07/10/run-apt-get-update-automatically-under-debian/

alternatively you can put apt::periodic statements in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:55:51 +0000

I have a new action (appropriately named 5-install)

cat /etc/cron-apt/action.d/5-install dist-upgrade -y autoclean -y

By: Torsten Skjødt

Torsten Skjødt — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:33:50 +0000

Thanks!

I’m managing (among other things) a Debian server in production. I have no scruples doing an auto-install, since my /etc/apt/sources.lst only lists Debian security updates. Those I trust to automatically update.

/TS

By: Case

Case — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:00:52 +0000

I’m reading a whole bunch of stuff about why it’s not a good idea to to do an unattended upgrade to your system. Gotta say I’m left in two minds on the subject - yeah a whole lot of hurt could be heading your way but is that any different than the pain experienced using M$ auto update. On the other hand, while I couldn’t give two hoots if a workstation gets trashed by auto update I set all my M$ servers to download only go figure.

Anyway, if you want the script to auto install the updates then all you need to do is edit out the -d switch from the dist-upgrade line in;

/etc/cron-apt/action/d3-download

The -d switch performs a download only so without it the script is gonna upgrade and installed apps …I guess it might also be a good idea to rename the file to “3-install” or some such.

By: Dennis Johansen

Dennis Johansen — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:03:31 +0000

Anyone who can help me getting this tool to do the install of the downloaded packages?

Please see the email notification from yesterday - Apparently the tool is in download mode - how to set it to download and install mode?

CRON-APT RUN [/etc/cron-apt/config]: Thu Jan 14 04:00:01 CET 2010
CRON-APT SLEEP: 204, Thu Jan 14 04:03:25 CET 2010
CRON-APT ACTION: 0-update
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get update -o quiet=2
CRON-APT ACTION: 3-download
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get autoclean -y
Reading package lists…
Building dependency tree…
Reading state information…
Del libssl0.9.8 0.9.8g-15+lenny5 [2975kB]
Del openssl 0.9.8g-15+lenny5 [1036kB]
CRON-APT LINE: /usr/bin/apt-get dist-upgrade -d -y -o APT::Get::Show-Upgraded=true
Reading package lists…
Building dependency tree…
Reading state information…
The following packages will be upgraded:
libkrb53 libssl0.9.8 openssl
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 4012kB/4493kB of archives.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
libssl0.9.8 libkrb53 openssl
Authentication warning overridden.
Get:1 http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/main libssl0.9.8 0.9.8g-15+lenny6 [2975kB]
Get:2 http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/main openssl 0.9.8g-15+lenny6 [1036kB]
Fetched 4012kB in 8s (490kB/s)
Download complete and in download only mode

By: Dennis Johansen

Dennis Johansen — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:56:22 +0000

Yes, I’m with Joe and his polite critic on this issue. Would have been better with small example for the script to actually download and upgrade the box. The mail issue is self explained in the config file, while the explanation of mode to install downloaded packages isn’t?

Anyone out there who’s using this tool?

By: joe

joe — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:40:03 +0000

cron-apt Contains a tool that is run by a cron job at regular intervals. By default it just updates the package list and download new packages without installing. You can instruct it to run anything that you can do with apt-get (or aptitude).

So, how can i get it to go beyond the default and get it to do the install too? that’s far more useful to discuss here than the email options you bother explaining…