Re: Software updates?

[bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx)]

Eric A. Bonney wrote:
> I have 3 different machines all running Debian.  On one of the machines 
> there are always updates that are needing to be applied.  On the other 
> two I don't ever see anything that needs to be applied and we have just 
> about the same packages on all three machines.
> 
> Is there a feature somewhere that I might have setup on the two machines 
> to automatically apply the updates without asking me?  I have compared 
> the /etc/apt/source.lst files and they all are the same, so I am 
> wondering if it is something I did on the desktop?

Pick one of the packages that needs an update that you think should
also need update on the other machines.  Check the version of that
package on all three machines.

  dpkg -l SOMEPACKAGE

If the version is the same on all machines then I would agree with you
that something is updating the other machines.  Did you install and
configure cron-apt?  But if the version is different then probably
your sources.list file is different or you are not updating the
indexes with 'apt-get update' and so the machine is working off of old
index files.

  apt-get update

And if the machines not needing the update don't have it install then
of course they don't need the security update.  :-)

Bob