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Automatic Updates on Ubuntu

Consider wisely, if you really want this, as it can result in unexpected behavior. I do this for a notebook which I don’t depend on and backup regularly. Also I usually do updates without looking into to the installing packages for this machine anyway…

Prerequisites

Check if the necessary service is up and running:

systemctl status unattended-upgrades

(This should be the case on default Ubuntu installations, if not do a sudo apt install unattended-upgrades.)

Configuration

Edit the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades with root to configure what and how the auto-upgrades happen:

Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades with root to define how often the upgrade gets started: