How to Set Up Unattended Upgrades on Debian 6/7

If you purchase a Debian server, then you should always have the latest security patches and updates, whether you’re asleep or not. This is pretty easy to do. Here’s how.

Run this command to install the “unattended-upgrades” package, along with a package to identify the changes:

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades apt-listchanges

After that is installed, then edit the unattended-upgrade configuration:

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

Paste the following into this file after emptying it, then modify items with ** **. Remember to remove the asterisks.

APT::Periodic::Enable "1";
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "**YOUR_EMAIL_HERE**";

// Automatically upgrade packages from these (origin, archive) pairs
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
"${distro_id} stable";
"${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-updates";
"${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-security";
};

// You can specify your own packages to NOT automatically upgrade here
Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist {
// "nginx";
// "php5-fpm";
};

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "false";

Install “apticron” to manage automatic execution of APT updates:

sudo apt-get install apticron

Open /etc/apticron/apticron.conf and set the EMAIL variable to your email address, so you can receive the list of changes.

EMAIL="**[email protected]**"
DIFF_ONLY="1"
LISTCHANGES_PROFILE="apticron"
SYSTEM="**HOSTNAME.OF.SERVER**"
NOTIFY_HOLDS="0"
NOTIFY_NO_UPDATES="0"

Open /etc/apt/listchanges.conf to configure APT to save the changes to a database:

[apt]
frontend=pager
email_address=**[email protected]**
confirm=0
save_seen=/var/lib/apt/listchanges.db
which=news