Man page 8 : unattended-upgrade

unattended-upgrade - automatic installation of security (and other) upgrades

unattended-upgrade [options]

This program 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. All output is logged to /var/log/unattended-ugprades.log.

This script is the backend for the APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade option and designed to be run from cron (e.g. via /etc/cron.daily/apt).

unattended-upgrade accepts the following options

• -h, --help
      help output
• -d, --debug
      extra debug output into /var/log/unattended-upgrades.log
• --dry-run
      Just simulate installing updates, do not actually do it

The configuration is done via the apt configuration mechanism, the default configuration file can be found at /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

unattended-upgrade is written by Michael Vogt <>

This manual page was originally written by Michael Vogt <>

Copyright (C) 2005-2009 Canonical

There is NO warranty. You may redistribute this software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. For more information about these matters, see the files named COPYING.