How to enable automatic updates on Ubuntu
Life is too short to manually upgrade the packages of your machine twice a week, so here is how to automate the software updates of an Ubuntu server (20.04 or 22.04).
First, you need to install unattended-upgrades
:
$ sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
Then configure it:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades
and select yes
on the dialog.
Then, you need to enable automatic updates on a daily basis:
$ vim /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
Finally, you may want to disable kernel updates that require a reboot:
$ sudo vim /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist {
// The following matches all packages starting with linux-
"linux-";
};
Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "false";