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I'm trying to activate the notification emails from unattended-upgrade package. I put a mail address into my configuration, installed mailx and created a configuration for mailx in /root/.mailrc. I tested successfully mailx with the .mailrc.

Info: the mail inside the unattended-upgrade configuration differs from the mail inside .mailrc.

I run unattended-upgrade -v -d --dry-run but I don't get a mail. There is also no debug information about sending a mail.

So what am I doing wrong? I couldn't find any information or working configuration about such a setup.

Any help is appreciated!

UPDATE: Patches (security) are getting installed correctly. So, the tool is running. I just checked the log files on the server. But I still get no mail from the system. And yes: the mail address below is not my real mail address.

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

// Automatically upgrade packages from these (origin:archive) pairs
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
        "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}";
        "${distro_id}:${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 {
//      "vim";
//      "libc6";
//      "libc6-dev";
//      "libc6-i686";
};

// This option allows you to control if on a unclean dpkg exit
// unattended-upgrades will automatically run
//   dpkg --force-confold --configure -a
// The default is true, to ensure updates keep getting installed
//Unattended-Upgrade::AutoFixInterruptedDpkg "false";

// Split the upgrade into the smallest possible chunks so that
// they can be interrupted with SIGUSR1. This makes the upgrade
// a bit slower but it has the benefit that shutdown while a upgrade
// is running is possible (with a small delay)
//Unattended-Upgrade::MinimalSteps "true";

// Install all unattended-upgrades when the machine is shuting down
// instead of doing it in the background while the machine is running
// This will (obviously) make shutdown slower
//Unattended-Upgrade::InstallOnShutdown "true";

// Send email to this address for problems or packages upgrades
// If empty or unset then no email is sent, make sure that you
// have a working mail setup on your system. A package that provides
// 'mailx' must be installed. E.g. "[email protected]"
Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "[email protected]";

// Set this value to "true" to get emails only on errors. Default
// is to always send a mail if Unattended-Upgrade::Mail is set
Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "false";

// Do automatic removal of new unused dependencies after the upgrade
// (equivalent to apt-get autoremove)
//Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "false";

// Automatically reboot *WITHOUT CONFIRMATION*
//  if the file /var/run/reboot-required is found after the upgrade
//Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "false";

// If automatic reboot is enabled and needed, reboot at the specific
// time instead of immediately
//  Default: "now"
//Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-Time "02:00";
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  • /usr/bin/mailx is probably just a link to something like /etc/alternatives/mailx. In order to debug this you could try replacing /usr/bin/mailx with a small script that prints out debugging information to a log file, then calls /etc/alternatives/mailx "$@".
    – Jos
    Mar 14, 2017 at 10:09
  • As I said: mailxis working properly. unattended-upgrade is not sending mails. How does unattended-upgrade know how to use mailx and what configuration to use?
    – aronadaal
    Mar 14, 2017 at 10:20
  • 1
    The reports will not be mailed in --dry-run mode or when there are no changes.
    – jarno
    Jun 2, 2017 at 12:17
  • 1
    I succeeded by using ssmtp instead of mailx.
    – jarno
    Jun 2, 2017 at 12:24
  • 1
    @Carl I do not have /usr/bin/mail, but I get mail from unattended-upgrade.
    – jarno
    Jun 6, 2017 at 21:46

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