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David Wolever
Asked: 2011-01-25 12:10:31 +0800 CST

Debian: automatic notification of updates?

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What's the simplest way of getting notified of security updates for packages I have installed on my Debian system?

debian security

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I like setting up apticron. It willnotify by email and download, not install, the packages.

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  2. There are many ways and packages to do this, but I think the simplest way is this cron job:

    0 */8 * * *     apt-get -qq update && apt-get -dqq dist-upgrade && apt-get -qq --simulate dist-upgrade | grep ^Inst

    This sends a mail to root whenever there is a package to be upgraded, which in a stable release means mostly security updates. As a general matter, you should of course redirect the root mail to somewhere you can read it.

    I have been using this for some years in a personal environment, and it works great.

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