1. Overview
2. Module Description
3. Setup
4. Usage
5. Reference
   • Classes
   • Parameters
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. License

The unattended_upgrades module allows for the installation and configuration of automatic security (and other) updates through apt.

This functionality used to be part of the puppetlabs-apt module but was split off into its own module.

The unattended_upgrades module automates the configuration of apt package updates.

• Package/configuration for unattended_upgrades

All you need to do is include the apt module, include apt, and this module, include unattended_upgrades for it to work.

This module relies on the apt module and will not work without it.

Using unattended_upgrades simply consists of including the module and if needed altering some of the default settings.

• unattended_upgrades: Main class, installs the necessary packages and writes the configuration.

• age ({}): A hash of settings with two possible keys:

  • min (2): Minimum age of a cache package file. File younger than min will not be deleted.
  • max (0): Maximum allowed age of a cache package file. File older than max will be deleted.

  Any of these keys can be specified and will be merged into the defaults:

  class { 'unattended_upgrades':
    age => { 'max' => 10 },
  }

• auto ({}): A hash of settings with these possible keys:

  • clean(0): Remove packages that can no longer be downloaded from cache every X days (0 = disabled).
  • fix_interrupted_dpkg(true): Try to fix package installation state.
  • reboot(false): Reboot system after package update installation.
  • reboot_time(now): If automatic reboot is enabled and needed, reboot at the specific time (instead of immediately).
  • remove(true): Remove unneeded dependencies after update installation.

  Any of these keys can be specified and will be merged into the defaults:

  class { 'unattended_upgrades':
    auto => { 'reboot' => true },
  }

• backup ({}): A hash with two possible keys:

  • archive_internal (0): Backup after n-days if archive contents changed.
  • level (3): Backup level.

  Any of these keys can be specified and will be merged into the defaults:

  class { 'unattended_upgrades':
    backup => { 'level' => 5 },
  }

• blacklist([]): A list of packages to not automatically upgrade.

• dl_limit(undef): Use a bandwidth limit for downloading, specified in kb/sec.

• enable (1): Enable the automatic installation of updates.

• install_on_shutdown (false): Install updates on shutdown instead of in the background.

• legacy_origin (true for Debian (squeeze), Ubuntu (precise, trusty, utopic, vivid, wily, xenial, yakkety, zesty, and default), false for Debian (wheezy and default)): Use the legacy Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins setting or the modern Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern.

• mail: A hash to configure email behaviour with two possible keys:

  • only_on_error (true): Only send mail when something went wrong
  • to (undef): Email address to send email too

  If the default for to is kept you will not receive any mail at all. You'll likely want to set this parameter.

  Any of these keys can be specified and will be merged into the defaults:

  class { 'unattended_upgrades':
    mail => { 'to' => '[email protected]', },
  }

• minimal_steps (true): Split the upgrade process into sections to allow shutdown during upgrade.

• origins: The repositories from which to automatically upgrade included packages.

• package_ensure (installed): The ensure state for the 'unattended-upgrades' package.

• random_sleep (undef): Maximum amount of time (in seconds) that the apt cron job can sleep before the execution. The exact amount of time will be random but up to the value specified. The purpose is to avoid that servers/mirrors get hammered at exactly the same time when a lot of machines are switched on, e.g. 9:00 in the morning. Note: If this is left unset, the default value in the apt cron job applies, which is 1800 seconds.

• size (0): Maximum size of the cache in MB.

• update (1): Do "apt-get update" automatically every n-days.

• upgrade (1): Run the "unattended-upgrade" security upgrade script every n-days.

• upgradeable_packages ({}): A hash with two possible keys:

  • download_only (0): Do "apt-get upgrade --download-only" every n-days.
  • debdelta (1): Use debdelta-upgrade to download updates if available.

  Any of these keys can be specified and will be merged into the defaults:

  class { 'unattended_upgrades':
    upgradeable_packages => { 'debdelta' => 1, },
  }

• verbose (0): Send report mail to root.

• options ({}): A hash of settings with these possible keys:

  • force_confdef (true) : Use the default option for new config files if one is available, don't prompt. If no default can be found, you will be prompted unless one of the confold or confnew options is also given
  • force_confold (true): Always use the old config files, don't prompt
  • force_connew (false): Always use the new config files, don't prompt
  • force_conmiss (false): Always install missing config files

This module should work across all versions of Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint.

The original code for this module comes from Evolving Web and was licensed under the MIT license. Code added since the fork of that module into puppetlabs-apt is covered under the Apache License version 2 as is any code added since it was split off into this separate unattended_upgrades module.

The LICENSE contains both licenses.