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: Saturday, May 29, 2021 at 2:51 AM
> 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?
>
> > Question: What do you mean by "a metapackage is not critically important"? Would you like to elaborate please?
>
> Take a look at "apt show gnome", for example.
>
> On bullseye, on my platform, the package "gnome" (which is a metapackage)
> has an Installed-Size of 35.8 kB.  It doesn't contain any software.  All
> it really contains are Depends: and Recommends: and Suggests: lines.  If
> you install this package, it will bring in a whole bunch of new packages
> (unless you already installed GNOME, in which case it may do nothing).
>
> Once all of those packages are installed, you can go ahead and remove
> the package named "gnome".  It doesn't do anything.  It's just a metapackage.

Thank you for explaining why a metapackage is not critically important. I'm a bit wiser now :)

> Well... OK, I'll tell you how I did it.  It's easily reversible, so it
> won't hurt you.
>
> I did it by creating the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99local with the
> following content (one line):
>
> APT::NeverAutoRemove ".";
>
> What this configuration file does is define a regular expression that
> matches every package, and then tells apt never to autoremove any package
> that matches that regular expression.
>
> If you want to go back to normal, simply remove that file.

Thank you very much for your example.

Best wishes.