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Glen Solsberry
Asked: 2010-05-04 06:05:06 +0800 CST

Is there a script/system to check Ubuntu/Debian sources for updates?

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Essentially, I'm looking at the .list files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/. Each of them has a deb entry; I'm curious to know if there's a way to see if any new distribution exists for any of the entries.

ubuntu debian apt

5 Answers

  1. Is sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade what you're looking for?

    Look at section 2.4 of this intro: http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/apt-get-intro.html

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  2. Best Answer

    Subscribe to debian-announce. No, really, you don't want to automate version upgrades, as by definition, things might break.

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  3. You tagged you're question as Ubuntu and Debian which is a bit confusing. Your comment to rescdsk's answer seems to indicate you're really looking for an answer for Debian.

    However here's a solution for Ubuntu I'm not sure if it will work for Debian or not.

    Install update-manager-core if it's not already on the system then you can see if there's a new release using do-release-upgrade -c

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  4. Correct me if I am wrong, but if you want to do a dist upgrade with apt-get you would issue

    apt-get update; apt-get -u dist-upgrade

    This should prompt you for what will be upgraded. You may have to do this a few times if you are behind. If you are currently on Lenny than a simple apt-get update; apt-get -u upgrade will prompt you on what you need to install to update the system. The -u is important as it will show you what will happen before you hit Y (yes).

    Now the above may not be what you are looking for but that is typical Debian/Ubuntu maintenance.

    If you are trying to update programs that would be considered outside of the Lenny stable environment, you can add those 'repositories' to /etc/apt/sources.list. Once the appropriate lines are entered there you should enter the apt-get update command and then either apt-cache search NAME (to search for a specific program) command or you could do a apt-get -u dist-upgrade as above but be wary where you are pulling packages from.

    If you actually want to scan the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ files, you can do this but I do not see the point as apt-get will take care of all issues as far as stable debs are concerned. If you need a solution to check each deb, versus the update tool, I can definitely help. Just need more info on what you are actually trying to accomplish as the tools do the general admin for you.

    Hope this helps

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  5. If you are looking to do centralized management on DEB package updates for multiple systems, someone wrote a thesis on this. The project added DEB support to Spacewalk, which is an open source update manager for RPM-based systems.

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