Mate desktop environment: anything akin to update-notifier

to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 12, 2021, 12:20:04 PM12/12/21

to

Hi,

is there anything in Debian's flavour of the Mate DE which notifies
the user of pending APT updates?

I'm not looking for something doing the updates automatically (in the
kind of unattended-upgrades, for example). The user in question would
like to manually trigger the upgrades, to be aware of possible issues
after it.

My search engine fu is failing me miserably here.

Thanks for any hints, cheers
--
tomás

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Lee

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Dec 12, 2021, 5:00:05 PM12/12/21

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On 12/12/21, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Hi,
>
> is there anything in Debian's flavour of the Mate DE which notifies
> the user of pending APT updates?

I went looking a year or two ago & didn't find anything I liked. I
finally decided my crontab entry was good enuf:

$ sudo crontab -l
[sudo] password for lee:
# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
...
# min hr dom mon dow command
18 4 * * 1,3,5,7 (apt update >> apt-update.log 2>/dev/null)
&& (apt list --upgradable 2>/dev/null | egrep -v '^Listing' >|
/etc/motd)

Regards,
Lee

Peter Ehlert

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Dec 12, 2021, 5:50:05 PM12/12/21

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On 12/12/21 9:01 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Hi,
>
> is there anything in Debian's flavour of the Mate DE which notifies
> the user of pending APT updates?

I use package-update-indicator

I don't care for the default so I set the command for installing updates
as synaptic-pkexec

>
> I'm not looking for something doing the updates automatically (in the
> kind of unattended-upgrades, for example). The user in question would
> like to manually trigger the upgrades, to be aware of possible issues
> after it.

not something I desire, so I never hunted for one

to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 13, 2021, 3:10:06 AM12/13/21

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On Sun, Dec 12, 2021 at 04:53:56PM -0500, Lee wrote:
> On 12/12/21, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > Hi,
> >

> > the user of pending APT updates?

> I went looking a year or two ago & didn't find anything I liked. I
> finally decided my crontab entry was good enuf:

Thanks, Lee, nice idea. The user in question isn't a classical command
line person, unfortunately. Otherwise...

On Sun, Dec 12, 2021 at 02:49:31PM -0800, Peter Ehlert wrote:

[...]

> I use package-update-indicator
>
> I don't care for the default so I set the command for installing updates as
> synaptic-pkexec

This one looks promising! Will look into it, thanks a bunch.

Cheers
--
t

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didier gaumet

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Dec 13, 2021, 4:30:04 AM12/13/21

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Le dimanche 12 décembre 2021 à 18:01 +0100, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :

[...]

> I'm not looking for something doing the updates automatically (in the
> kind of unattended-upgrades, for example). The user in question would
> like to manually trigger the upgrades, to be aware of possible issues
> after it.

[...]

Hello Tomas,

Both Peter & Lee have suggested more pertinent (GUI) options for an
ordinary user but for the record, either unattended-upgrades and cron-
apt can be configured to automatically update but let the user/admin
manually upgrade if she/he whishes so (it's not the default nowadays in
Debian with unattended-upgrades but I think this is still the default
with cron-apt).
Installing apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs can help prevent problems
with automatic upgrades: the former warns by e-mail of configuration or
usage changes in a package, the latter can block a bugged upgrade until
the bug is fixed or the user/admin decides on upgrading because a
particular bug does not bother her/him.

Cheers :-)

to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 13, 2021, 11:00:04 AM12/13/21

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On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 10:22:27AM +0100, didier gaumet wrote:

[...]

> Hello Tomas,

Hello, Didier

>
> Both Peter & Lee have suggested more pertinent (GUI) options for an
> ordinary user but for the record, either unattended-upgrades and cron-
> apt can be configured to automatically update but let the user/admin
> manually upgrade if she/he whishes so (it's not the default nowadays in
> Debian with unattended-upgrades but I think this is still the default
> with cron-apt).
> Installing apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs can help prevent problems
> with automatic upgrades: the former warns by e-mail of configuration or
> usage changes in a package, the latter can block a bugged upgrade until
> the bug is fixed or the user/admin decides on upgrading because a
> particular bug does not bother her/him.

Warm thanks -- this is for a decidedly GUI person. I've tried to seduce
her to console and a bit of shell, alas, without success.

Best for her seems to be a notification with a button where she can say
"do now!" and another for "later" or something similar.

Package-update-indicator sounds like right, I'll try that.

Cheers, salut
--
tomás

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