12.5 Enabling Automatic Updates

The previous section looked at how to manually install package upgrades. Ubuntu systems may also be configured to install upgrades automatically. This can be configured either from the command-line or from within the Software & Updates tool.

From within the Software & Updates tool, open the Settings screen as outlined previously and click on the Updates tab to display the screen shown in Figure 12-6:

Figure 12-6

Select how often the system should check for updates (daily, every other day, weekly, etc.). Next choose what is to be done when updates are available (download only, download and install, or display a notification on the desktop). You can also configure the updater to let you know when new versions of Ubuntu are available.

To configure automatic updates from the command-line, follow these steps:

1. Install the unattended-upgrades package:

# apt install unattended-upgrades

2. Edit the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended...