Ubuntu To Notify Me Of New Updates

[TheFu]

I think the default action for all Ubuntu desktops is for update notifications to be provided once a day.
There is a tool, update-notifier, installed by default which controls updates.
It is run from anacron using the daily event whenever that happens on your system(s). On mine, it happens at 6:25am.

My only knowledge about this is because I remove the notifications and don't wish to be nagged other times.

A system that isn't installed really shouldn't notify about updates, since there isn't anywhere for them to be stored. It isn't like a read-only ISO can be modified.

[open4epl]

Is there a way to find out when it happens on mine?

[TheFu]

After you install, yes. Just look for when anacron runs the daily tasks.

It is in the /etc/crontab file.

25 6    * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )

That shows 6:25am.

If you look in the /etc/cron.daily/ directory, there is an update-notifier-common script. That is what does the updates.

Then ... there is some GUI task, which is dependent on what GUI you run that decides what to do, if anything, with that information. I don't use a DE, so can't suggest what the popular Ubuntu DEs might or might not do.

But ... those files and directories above work on Ubuntu servers and desktops. If you want the updates to happen more often, there is a cron.hourly/ directory. Mine is empty currently. According to my crontab file, it runs at 17 min after every hour. There are cron.weekly/ and cron.monthly/ directories too. On my system, these get notified about new releases as they become available ... so 14.04 --> 16.04 --> 18.04 reminders will happen on my systems. I only use LTS versions. There is a setting that controls which sorts of releases each system is notified about. LTS, 6 month or development branches.

As you can see, this quickly becomes a rabbit hole.

[open4epl]

My daily file says:

#!/bin/sh


set -e


[ -x /usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader ] || exit 0


# Try to rerun any package data downloads that failed at package install time.
/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader

[TheFu]

So you see it is a rabbit hole. Follow it if you like. Be certain to read the manpage for every command to understand what they do along the way.

This is how Unix knowledge is gained, BTW.