How to revert unexpected unattended-upgrades

Question

I've been working on a LAMP server in a virtual machine with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS that I downloaded from VirtualBoxImages.com. It had a virtual disk image of about 1.8 GB. I back it up regularly.

A few days ago I was working on the PHP code when the server suddenly stopped working. I verified it and found out it started some "unattended-upgrades" by itself.

"Ok, for safety/performance's sake, let it do it." I thought. When it finished I went back to work on my server.

Alas, today I noticed it increased the virtual disk space from 1.8 GB to 3.0 GB... I'm sure it wasn't me because I didn't install any software at all. Worst of it, without noticing, I already backed it up like that...

One of the goals of this virtual machine is to have the smallest size possible. How can I revert this mess these "unwanted-upgrades" put me in?

Answer 1

Disabling security updates will unnecessarily expose your server to known and published security risks.

It is therefore strongly recommended to always install security updates.

To clean up hard disk space after having installed these updates there are much better methods as outlined here:

• How do I free up disk space?

Answer 2

I downloaded again a clean LAMP virtual machine. I copied, installed and configured everything again. And I did this to prevent future automatic updates/upgrades.

Important edit:

Found out the cause: dynamically allocated HD capacity for a VM doesn't shrink back after using more of it.