Re: Timer doing apt update
On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 03:56:49AM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 19, 2024 at 10:21:24PM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > Does anyone know when these things changed, and why on earth nobody
> > knew about it?! Did I miss a section in the release notes or something?
>
> Why are you shocked by this? Most of it is disabled by default (no
> update / upgrade / unattended-upgrade). You have to set things like
> APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists to 1.
>
> It's been there since Debian 9 (stretch) IIRC.
>
> The handbook has stuff about it.
>
> https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/sect.regular-upgrades.html
According to this page, the configuration is in
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic (which does not exist on my system).
Also according to this page, there is a script in
/usr/lib/apt/apt.systemd.daily which describes the configuration
variables (this script does exist).
According to the /usr/lib/apt/apt.systemd.daily script, the
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic file has to be created if you want to
change the defaults. OK.
Also according to that script, the default values are listed in the
comments of said script.
These comments include:
# APT::Periodic::Enable "1";
# - Enable the update/upgrade script (0=disable)
which, if I'm reading this correctly, says that this thing is enabled
by default. "This thing" being an "update/upgrade script". Whatever
that means.
The comments also include:
# APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
# - Do "apt-get update" automatically every n-days (0=disable)
#
# APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
# - Do "apt-get upgrade --download-only" every n-days (0=disable)
I'm not sure how to interpret this combination of things. Do these
default settings mean "the update/upgrade script will run, but it won't
actually do anything"?
Reply to: