How can I check if automatic updates are enabled?

Question

I want to be sure if automatic updates are enabled on Ubuntu 12.04 server.

How exactly can I check this?

And how can I disable automatic updates if it's enabled?

Answer 1

There is a package that can be used to do this for you. Linky

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades

That is the package you need to install. Once its installed edit the file

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

In that file you can set how often you want the server to update.

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

The file should look like that. The 1 means it will update every day. 7 is weekly.

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

This file will let you chose what updates you want to make by choosing where apt can search for new updates and upgrades. ( My personal opinion on this is I would set it to security if this is a server )

Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
        "Ubuntu lucid-security";
//      "Ubuntu lucid-updates";

};

Your file will look like this obviously this is for 10.04 so you will need to change the file sources to precise but the same functionality is there. I would remove the updates one and just leave security.

This is the link above condensed into a smaller package with my thoughts.

Thanks Bill

Answer 2

I upgraded our servers from 10.04 LTS to 12.04.1 LTS. They had automatic updates enabled and working in 10.04, but after upgrading to 12.04.1 automatic updates did not work.

I hope this will resolve my issue:

AutomaticSecurityUpdates - Under the "Using the "unattended-upgrades" package" section: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates

I have also modified /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades to look like this since I want all updates, not just security updates to be applied:

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";

Answer 3

Automatic Updates are enabled by default. If not, to enable automatic updates, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command below.

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades

For more information, and how to configure these updates, see Ubuntu Documentation

In server, you can also you can edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades, and comment out update update you don't want to upgrade automatically. These edit must be done with root privileges.