How To Install unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu 18.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu 18.04. unattended-upgrades is automatic installation of security upgrades

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu 18.04.

What is unattended-upgrades

unattended-upgrades is:

This package can download and install security upgrades automatically and unattended, taking care to only install packages from the configured APT source, and checking for dpkg prompts about configuration file changes.

This script is the backend for the APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade option.

There are three methods to install unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install unattended-upgrades Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install unattended-upgrades using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install unattended-upgrades

Install unattended-upgrades Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install unattended-upgrades using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install unattended-upgrades

Install unattended-upgrades Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install unattended-upgrades using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install unattended-upgrades

How To Uninstall unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu 18.04

To uninstall only the unattended-upgrades package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove unattended-upgrades

Uninstall unattended-upgrades And Its Dependencies

To uninstall unattended-upgrades and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove unattended-upgrades

Remove unattended-upgrades Configurations and Data

To remove unattended-upgrades configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge unattended-upgrades

Remove unattended-upgrades configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove unattended-upgrades configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge unattended-upgrades

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install unattended-upgrades package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.