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sds
Asked: 2013-05-06 06:48:57 +0800 CST

How to disable update notification for all users?

  • 772

This is a partial case of the more general question "Don't bother non-admin users with admin questions":

I have several non-admin users on a computer and I want to disable software updates for all of them. I tried this:

# su wife -c gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.

(I am logged on to the computer being administered via ssh).

update-manager

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In newer versions of Ubuntu, there is a (hidden) per-user config option for this.

    Just run (as the user for whom you want to disable notifications):

    gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier no-show-notifications true

    Or, if you prefer doing things visually, run dconf-editor, browse to /com/ubuntu/update-notifier and enable the no-show-notifications option.

    (Source)

    • 2

  2. The solution turned out to be to use gconftool to set auto_launch to false for myself (without sudo) and then to copy the config file to all the other user accounts:

    for u in wife ${kids}; do 
  cp -fv /home/me/.gconf/apps/update-notifier/%gconf.xml /home/$u/.gconf/apps/update-notifier/%gconf.xml
  chown -v $u:$u /home/$u/.gconf/apps/update-notifier/%gconf.xml
done
    • 1