unattended-upgrades cookbook

This cookbook configures the unattended-upgrades package which performs automatic package updates on debian systems.

Test status:

CI automatically runs linting tests. You may also run more thorough integration tests via Vagrant as well. See below for details on how to do that.

Requirements

Debian or Ubuntu Operating System and the apt cookbook

Usage

Simply include the cookbook "unattended-upgrades". Common config that you may want to change:

node['unattended-upgrades']['admin_email'] Defaults to 'root@localhost' Set to nil to disable email notification, or any other external email

node['unattended-upgrades']['allowed_origins']

Default value (at default precedence) is:

{
  'security'  => true,
  'updates'   => false,
  'proposed'  => false,
  'backports' => false
}

You can change this to enable non-critical updates by setting in a role or environment:

"default_attributes": {
  "unattended-upgrades": {
    "allowed_origins": {
      "updates": true
    }
  }
}

Please note that if you set your own changes at an override precedence, then the two hashes will not be merged together, and the full list should be specified again. e.g. alternately:

"override_attributes": {
  "unattended-upgrades": {
    "allowed_origins": {
      "security":  true,
      "updates":   true,
      "proposed":  false,
      "backports": false
    }
  }
}

TODO: Third party PPA's are not yet supported in the allowed origins section

node['unattended-upgrades']['mail_only_on_error'] Set this to true if you want to skip mails for successful updates, however it can be helpful for troubleshooting to have a record of when packages were updated if you need to correlate when an error started occurring with the time packages were updated.

node['unattended-upgrades']['minimal_steps'] Set this to true if you expect to be able to reboot the server with minimal interruption and the updates might be running at the time. With this left on the default value of false, the server will wait for all updates to complete before shutting down. See the full attributes list and the comments in the template file for more information. This cookbook has strived to provide configurable attributes for as many options as possible to allow maximum flexibility.

Attributes

• ['unattended-upgrades']['admin_email']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['package_blacklist']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['autofix_dpkg']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['minimal_steps']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['install_on_shutdown']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['mail_only_on_error']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['remove_unused_dependencies']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['automatic_reboot']
• ['unattended-upgrades']['download_limit']

Recipes

unattended-upgrades::default

Cookbook Development

Running the tests for this cookbook involves:

Requires:
* ruby 1.9.2+
* bundler
* Vagrant 1.2+ (and Virtualbox)
* vagrant plugin install vagrant-berkshelf

Run the lint tests via: bundle exec thor foodcritic:lint. Run the full integration tests via: vagrant up for first run and vagrant provision. Destroy the test VM via vagrant destroy

Author

Author:: Jeremy Olliver (jeremy.olliver@gmail.com)