Re: How do I permanently disable unattended downloads of software/security updates?

[Stella Ashburne <rewefie@gmx.com>]

Hello,

Thanks for your help and time. I really appreciate it.

> Sent: Friday, May 28, 2021 at 8:06 PM
> From: "Greg Wooledge" <greg@wooledge.org>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: How do I permanently disable unattended downloads of software/security updates?
>
> More likely, it was brought in as a recommendation by some desktop
> environment.  One may use "aptitude why unattended-upgrades" to find
> out why it was installed, or more properly, why it's not being marked
> for autoremoval at the current moment.

I'm very certain that I didn't install it manually. In fact, during installation of Debian, I specifically chose the option to not upgrade/update software automatically.

The package "unattended-upgrades" might have been installed automatically because I installed a minimal Gnome desktop environment (I quite like using Gnome.)

Question: Instead of using "aptitude why unattended-upgrades" command, can I use "apt why unattended-upgrades"? I was told many years ago that the command "aptitude" was deprecated.

> However, if the package is marked as a *dependency* of some desktop
> environment, rather than simply a recommendation, then purging the
> undesired package may also try to remove the desktop environment
> metapackage.  And some people panic when that happens, because they
> don't understand that a metapackage is not critically important.

Question: What command can I type in a terminal to find out if the package "unattended-upgrades" is a *dependency* of some other packages?

Yeah, I do panic when any metapackage of my Gnome desktop environment is removed. Why? My knowledge of computing and Debian is elementary.

Question: What do you mean by "a metapackage is not critically important"? Would you like to elaborate please?

>
> (And then it gets even more complicated when you consider autoremove,
> because removing the placeholder metapackage may free up various other
> pieces of the desktop environment -- ones that actually *do* something --
> to be marked for autoremoval.  And that's not desired.)

Thanks for your explanation.
>
> (Personally I solve all of that by disabling autoremoval.  But that's
> just me, and most people seem to like it.)

I wish to improve my knowledge of computing. How do I disable autoremove? What is the command to be typed in a terminal?