Install updates, completely silent except for any errors

**newbuntu2020** · January 6th, 2021

Is there a command that will install all updates with no output at all except for errors? The use case is systems which automatically update themselves by running a suitable command as a cronjob and those who maintain the systems them only get an email about it if something goes wrong.

I thought

Code:

apt-get -qq -y dist-upgrade && reboot

would do it, but even though that appears to be maximum quiet it still emits a lot of information. I've been doing this for years on CentOS with

Code:

yum -y -e 0 -d 0 update && reboot

but can't work out a Ubuntu version of that.

**TheFu** · January 6th, 2021

I don't do automatic updates on production systems, been burned, but it appears to be missing the required apt-get update command. Ubuntu is different from centos in that way.

To be quiet, I'd just redirect the output for stdout and stderr to different files. Then if anything is in the stderr file, email that.

**ActionParsnip** · January 6th, 2021

As stated by TheFu you need

Code:

sudo apt update

to reread the reporistory information before new packages will be detected.

**CatKiller** · January 6th, 2021

You don't need to reinvent the wheel unless you particularly want to; unattended upgrades is already a thing.

**newbuntu2020** · January 7th, 2021

Originally Posted by CatKiller

You don't need to reinvent the wheel unless you particularly want to; unattended upgrades is already a thing.

As far as I can tell the unattended upgrades thing does not provide a way to reboot the system after the installation of updates and as such it's no use to me.

**CelticWarrior** · January 7th, 2021

Reboot typically is of no use for most updates anyway - this isn't Windows - but if you want to do the way you're used to then just correct the commands as indicated above.

**TheFu** · January 7th, 2021

Originally Posted by newbuntu2020

As far as I can tell the unattended upgrades thing does not provide a way to reboot the system after the installation of updates and as such it's no use to me.

No need to reboot, unless /var/run/reboot-required exists, which is only about once a month.
Rebooting automatically is asking for trouble. Good luck with that.