apt-get update from cron?

["Jonathan D. Proulx" <jon@ai.mit.edu>]

Hi,

I'm in the process of making Debian the "suppored" GNU/Linux distro on
my network, part of that involves changing default confiles.

In this context I've been kicking around the idea of running
apt-get update > /dev/null && apt-get -qq -y upgrade
from /etc/cron.daily

I'm wondering if anyone else is doing this and what the experience has
been.

I recently had the glibc update <pre|post>isnt.sh choke because
/dev/tty was unconfigure when I did a forked ssh apt-get (ssh -l root
-f <host> apt-get -qq -y upgrade).  This was on a cluster of sparc
systems (all headless), five of 8 went ok over ssh -f, three tanked
but worked when I got an interactive session.

I'm somewhat concerned that this may happen from cron as well, but
these systems will be intel boxen with heads (atleast mostly).

-Jon