Dirk große Osterhues

In order to have automatic and unattended security updates in Ubuntu, one needs to install the according package:

sudo aptitude install unattended-upgrades

Due to a missing file in the Ubuntu 10.10 package, the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic needs to be created with the following content:

APT::Periodic::Enable "1";
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "5";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
APT::Periodic::RandomSleep "1800";

Also, change the first few lines of /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades as follows so that only security updates are considered:

// Automatically upgrade packages from these (origin, archive) pairs
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
//      "${distro_id} stable";
        "${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-security";
        "${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-updates";
//      "${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-proposed-updates";
};

It is vital to redo these setting after a global upgrade to a new distro release.

If configured correctly the following command should produce this output:

$ apt-config shell UnattendedUpgradeInterval APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade 
UnattendedUpgradeInterval='1'