Q4OS Forum

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,332

Jessie Backports and unattended upgrades

I prefer to use unattended-upgrades to handle my regular maintenance and it works just fine for me.

What puzzles me is this. I have a couple of apps installed from backports and they work fine.

What I don't fully understand is how updates work in conjunction with backports.

For example I installed Darktable from backports and it pulled in a few dependencies.

So, when the system is running updates I would expect that it would look for updates to backport packages that have been installed.

There are obviously lots of items in backports that are newer versions of current packages installed and sometimes I find that if I run apt-get update/upgrade it shows, say 187 packages to upgrade - which are obviously backports. However those do not get picked up in unattended upgrades.

So, I'm just puzzled as to how the un-needed backports items are excluded from unattended but do show in a manual update/upgrade - is there some kind of pinning involved or am I making it too complicated?

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Jessie Backports and unattended upgrades

if you have local mail set you can change the option in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades to send you a mail which should give reasons for any refused package (not tested but looking through the scripts it seems to send logging information if a package is not upgraded for any reason)
change
Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "root"; to your username
Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true"; to false
And you should get the required info in your local mailbox.
HTH

Info:
Unattended upgrade is a python script (or set of scripts) and can be read by simply using any text editor.

Last edited by Dai_trying (2016-11-18 12:24)

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,490

Website

Re: Jessie Backports and unattended upgrades

Unattended upgrade does the same job as 'apt-get upgrade' . If you have installed some package from Backports repository, it's marked as manual installed and is upgraded once the new version is available. Of course, unattended upgrade follows pinning and any other APT settings from '/etc/apt/'.

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,332

Re: Jessie Backports and unattended upgrades

Thanks @Dai and @Q4OSTeam

OK - I think I see what's happening.

When I do apt-get update/upgrade it shows either nothing or just a couple of packages to upgrade depending on circumstances.

However if I do apt-get -t jessie-backports install darktable it shows the packages and then x number to install etc and 170 not upgraded.

It was this last figure that was puzzling me but it looks like it is only there when installing from backports - not at any other time.

Sorry to have been a nuisance!

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,490

Website

Re: Jessie Backports and unattended upgrades

... and 170 not upgraded...

You can safely ignore this message, as the '-t jessie-backports' switch suppresses default Backports pinning for this command to be able to install from. The pin priority is set by APT to '100' for Backports by default, please see https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Jessie Backports and unattended upgrades

Sorry to have been a nuisance!

Your not a nuisance at all, like I said to my kids if you don't ask you wont know.