What is the state of automatic updates?

[Frank Beuth]

The documentation is somewhat unclear: which updates can be or are automated,
and for which updates do users need to do manual checking? (and can this be
turned into a cron job?)

I checked the qubes-users archive but found conflicting (probably out of date)
information.

[awokd]

Frank Beuth wrote on 2/20/19 10:39 AM:

In 4.0, the update widget with the sun should check for updates for all
components automatically. However, it won't apply them until you tell it
to. It also won't work for HVMs running some OS Qubes doesn't know how
to handle; for example, Windows or a Linux distribution without the
Qubes tools installed.

[Frank Beuth]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 12:30:28PM +0000, 'awokd' via qubes-users wrote:
>In 4.0, the update widget with the sun should check for updates for
>all components automatically. However, it won't apply them until you
>tell it to. It also won't work for HVMs running some OS Qubes doesn't
>know how to handle; for example, Windows or a Linux distribution
>without the Qubes tools installed.

Thank you!

[Bill Wether]

The widget is very convenient but has a few peculiarities at the moment:

(1) it doesn't reset the "updates available for x qubes" in the tooltip;
(2) it doesn't automatically select the templates needing upgrading, and
(3) some things that fail get a green check mark, so I always have to
look at the 'details' pane.

I haven't seen (3) in the last several days, so it may be fixed, but
iirc it was Fedora templates that couldn't find one or more of their
repos.

Sure is nicer than doing it manually though!

Cheers

BillW

[awokd]

Bill Wether:

Thanks. Then in answer to Frank, please check out some of the scripts
under the OS-administration heading here:
https://github.com/Qubes-Community/Contents/tree/master/code.

[cooloutac]

From a security point of view I would caution against automatic updates.

[Vít Šesták]

Why? I suggest having updates as automated as possible – for security reasons. It allows you to have all the latest security updates as soon as possible.

Regards,
Vít Šesták 'v6ak'