I do not like automatic updates so I want to disable them always.
I use Ubuntu 14.04 with Gnome desktop environment. gsettings
may not be available in other Ubuntu flavors.
On slow internet connections disabling apt-xapian-index prevents automatic package downloading which will take all your bandwith (I have 256 kb/s mobile sometimes).
sudo chmod a-x /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common
sudo chmod a-x /etc/cron.weekly/apt-xapian-index
sudo chmod a-x /etc/cron.weekly/update-notifier-common
gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier regular-auto-launch-interval 3650
gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-manager launch-time 1900000000
Seemed to do the trick for me. 3650 means days...
1900000000 tells that the update-manager is last run on year 2030 :)
Update: On Ubuntu 16.04 it seems that you are able to disable automatic updates with following commands and by editing two files:
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop.old
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop.old
If extension is other than .desktop
these commands won't be run on system start.
Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "0";
Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";
If you have started Update manager even ONCE these files will contain four lines:
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";
Just change all values to "0"
dbus-monitor --session "interface=org.freedesktop.Notifications"
... I was having a heck of a time identifying which service was sending the notification signals, this helped tremendously. – jmunsch Apr 10 '19 at 18:23