Itis possible to perform automatic, unattended updates to a system, but there are some potential problems. Setting it up is quite simple. Just install the unattendedupgrades package. Ifyou aren't asked during installation ifyou want to enable automatic security upgrades, run the command dpkg-reconfigure -plow
unattended-upgrades.
Generally, only security upgrades will be automatically installed, which will minimize potential problems, which include modified dependencies and changes that modify how the software is configured or how it operates. Itis possible to allow other upgrades by modifying the configuration file in /ete/apt/apt. eonf .d/SOunattendedupgrades. The file is commented to help identify the modifications desired, generally just removing the / / in front of the lines you want to enable. Note that enabling anything other than security updates can result in errors (when dependency issues are encountered) or system disruption (when the upgrade modifies software behavior or configuration). This is especially true ifthe stable release name is used, which can result in very major changes when a new stable version is released.
Best practice is to allow automatic installation of security upgrades only (use the default configuration). The package information cache for all packages will be updated in any case, so you can manually upgrade
the rest of the packages periodically, allowing you to address any unusual upgrade issues as they arise.
