Still not obvious how to configure unattended-upgrades

Bug #311052 reported by era
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
unattended-upgrades (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Michael Vogt

Bug Description

Binary package hint: unattended-upgrades

Usage scenario: find out that there is a package called "unattended-upgrades" on your system, and try to figure out how to use it.

There is no manual page. /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade --help doesn't do anything (or rather, it says you need to be root). /usr/share/doc/unattended-upgrade/README vaguely hints at stuff you should perhaps install, but it seems somewhat out of date (in particular, the pointer to the completely unhelpful if not outright misleading https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutomaticUpdates), and needlessly complex, given that all I needed in the end was to run dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades and press Y

I was feeling tempted to reopen LP bug #84918 (which is where I finally found some useful information) but decided instead to submit a new bug report.

Suggested fix:

* Replace README with a shorter, less technical introduction
* Create a manual page
* Create a --help option (shouldn't this be in /usr/sbin anyway if it's only useful for system administration?)

Suggested contents of README:

unattended-upgrades provides facilities for installing security upgrades automatically, unattended. However, it is not enabled by default. Most users enable it via the Update Manager, which has a simple checkbox in the UI for enabling unattended upgrades. If you would prefer to enable it from the command line, run "dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades". To enable unattended upgrades via the installer's preseed facility, use ... (sorry, I'm too dumb to finish this, but I would appreciate if somebody would tell me how to do it. Thanks).

Intrepid i386, unattended-upgrades 0.32ubuntu2

Revision history for this message
era (era) wrote :

> Most users enable it via the Update Manager, which has a simple
> checkbox in the UI for enabling unattended upgrades

Sorry, this should be Software Sources, and the widget is actually a radio button. (The default is to just notify about new security updates.)

Bug #84918 has details about how and what to preseed which I imagine are understandable to people who successfully confgure preseeding.

Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks for your bugreport and your suggestions.

I added them to the README file now and I hope they are clearer now.

Changed in unattended-upgrades (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Michael Vogt (mvo)
status: New → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
era (era) wrote :

I see you added a manual page, too. Looking good. Thanks!

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package unattended-upgrades - 0.50ubuntu1

---------------
unattended-upgrades (0.50ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * fix crash in ouput, thanks to Joerg Schuetter, closes: #535347
  * when running in --debug mode, also print debug output to stderr
  * add --dry-run option to simulate a run, but not actually install
    something
  * when running with --debug, install packages instead of just
    simulating the install, --dry-run is avaialble for simulation
  * check for packages on hold and do not upgrade them (closes: #511677)
  * deal better with failures in pkgname_from_deb() (LP: #305046)
  * improved the README some more (LP: #311052)
  * fix locking problem (LP: #359010)
  * Contain unattended-upgrades log in the status mail as well
    (LP: #245422)
  * ensure that unattended-upgrade is finished on shutdown
    (LP: #191514)

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:26:48 +0200

Changed in unattended-upgrades (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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