Unattended upgrades on Ubuntu 14.04 with email notifications

ubuntu_unattended_upgrades_gmail.markdown

Getting Started

Do yourself a favor and login as root to save yourself some time and headaches:

$ sudo su -

Install unattended-upgrades:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install unattended-upgrades 

Frequency Configuration

$ dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

Select yes when prompted, and it will generate /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades:

$ nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades

I chose the following configuration. The number is the frequency in days:

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "3";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "9";

Explanation:

• APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1"
  • Update the package lists daily. This is really important. If you don't update them often enough, unattended-upgrades can fail because it may have outdated sources. If you haven't updated in a long time before running unattended-upgrades, be sure to run an apt-get update before you start.
• APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1"
  • Download updates every day. Even though I didn't choose to install my upgrades every day, I prefer to not download them all at once.
• APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "3"
  • Perform installation every 3 days. I'm using this in a production env and didn't feel comfortable with daily installs. Might end up tweaking this some more.
• APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "9"
  • Clean the package cache every 9 days. This overlaps with 3 runs of unattended-upgrades. I just picked this arbitrarily. Read about apt-get autoclean if you want more information on what this does.

unattended-upgrades Configuration

Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades to change what happens when unattended-upgrades is run:

$ nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Configure the packages you want to automatically upgrade. Security-only is a great way to start:

Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
        "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-security";
//      "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-updates";
//      "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-proposed";
//      "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-backports";
};

Add your email address. I would suggest a mailing list or a dedicated email account:

Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "[email protected]";

Configure automatic reboot (optional). This will allow the server to reboot if required. You must have update-notifier-common installed for this to work. More info here. Feel free to omit this step until you're comfortable with the rest of your configuration:

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true";
Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-Time "19:00"; // Optional

Email Notification Configuration

You can send notifications via Gmail (or other SMTP providers) when upgrades are performed. You should do this.

Install mailx. You need heirloom-mailx to use SMTP:

$ apt-get install heirloom-mailx

Configure mailx defaults. Assuming you are still logged in as root:

$ cd ~
$ nano .mailrc

Add the following to .mailrc in root's home directory:

set smtp-use-starttls
set ssl-verify=ignore
set smtp=smtp://smtp.gmail.com:587
set smtp-auth=login
set [email protected]
set smtp-auth-password=mypassword
set from="[email protected]"

Replace smtp, smtp-auth-user, smtp-auth-password, and from settings with settings appropriate to your account or email provider. For example, to send mail via outlook.com, set smtp=smtp-mail.outlook.com, update smtp-auth-user and smtp-auth-password, and leave the other settings the same.

Change the permissions of .mailrc:

chmod 400 .mailrc

Send yourself a test email:

echo "Just testing mailx" | mail -s "Yooooo woot" [email protected]

Congratulations, you're finished! Now you should verify your configuration before you leave it running.

Testing Your Configuration

Perform a dry-run to make sure the correct packages are downloaded:

$ unattended-upgrade -v -d --dry-run

If that looks good, do the real thing:

$ unattended-upgrade -v -d

Make sure that the upgrade completed successfully and you received your notification. Now you can leave this to run automatically and wait patiently for the next email notification.

As an alternative to heirloom-mailx you can use mailutils with ssmtp:

1. apt install mailutils ssmtp
2. Configure ssmtp in /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

root=<[email protected]>
mailhub=<someUrl>:<probably587>

AuthUser=<account>
AuthPass=<password>
UseTLS=YES
UseSTARTTLS=YES

hostname=<some-long-host-name>

3. Configure mailutils to use ssmtp in /etc/mailutils.conf

mailer {
  url sendmail://ssmtp;
}