Unattended-Upgrades and autoremove dangerous?

haikosaw

12/26/22, 1:12 PM

I have an Ubuntu 20.04.1 server that I configured to automatically update with unattended-upgrades and 'InstallOnShutdown'. I also activated the 'autoremove unused dependencies' feature. After a reboot at night, and unattended-upgrades doing it's job, the next morning I found that autoremove had removed all network capabilities and some other essential Ubuntu components. So the server had no network anymore. Just SOME of the uninstalled were: git, ubuntu-server, cloud-init, iptables, ubuntu-standard, ufw, isc-dhcp-client, netplan.io, iproute2, openssh-server, xauth, python3-netifaces, python3-distutils, python3-setuptools, screen, tmux

I ended up reinstalling because I needed the quickest solution (no saved data, just a service). Is this autoremove feature known to be dangerous? Or can this be, because I marked almost all packages as auto-installed yesterday (apt-mark auto)?

171

1 + 3

upgrade

server

apt

unattended-upgrades

20.04

haikosaw

12/26/22, 2:35 PM

The stock install has a timer called apt-daily-upgrade, yes. But when does it install updates? I use unattended upgrades in order to make upgrades wait for a reboot. We've had multiple problems with Ubuntu installing updates which need a reboot, and then some service (docker/dockerregistry) doesn't work correctly anymore until a reboot is made (Docker is not in the origins, only security/Ubuntu). I guess I could also make a service always checking if a reboot is required and reboot at night, could work like that as well.

user535733

12/26/22, 2:43 PM

Oh, I think I understand: Perhaps you didn't *enable* Unattended Upgrades; you merely changed the config. Well, that's why the config file is there. The former suggests some weird non-standard install that may have other impacts (hence concern); the latter is completely normal and expected.

haikosaw

12/26/22, 6:21 PM

Sorry, yes, you are correct. I thought I had seen a timer unattended-upgrades.timer and so I thought that what is enabled by default was different, because on a clean install I couldn't find that timer..but I was mistaken, there is none. So yes, I only changed the 50unattended-upgrades file to fit my _needs_.

Score:1

Ubuntu

Artur Meinild

12/26/22, 1:24 PM

From the apt-mark manpage:

auto
    auto is used to mark a package as being automatically installed, which will cause the
    package to be removed when no more manually installed packages depend on this package.

manual
    manual is used to mark a package as being manually installed, which will prevent the
    package from being automatically removed if no other packages depend on it.

So yeah, marking the packages as auto-installed can indeed be dangerous.

Under normal circumstances, Remove-Unused-Dependencies in unattended-upgrades or running apt autoremove should not be dangerous. But this of course depends on the following:

There were no dependency errors introduced in any packages (which may cause undesired removals)
There are no errors in the manual or auto flags of packages (as you experienced)

0 + 1

haikosaw

12/26/22, 2:26 PM

Thanks. I guess I should've taken more time to read more. I marked them auto because I thought maybe then the least amount of packages would be held back...but I was already second guessing this could be the issue. At least with a fresh install now I have a baseline again of what should be marked manual.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Unattended-Upgrades and autoremove dangerous?

TH: การอัปเกรดแบบอัตโนมัติและลบอัตโนมัติเป็นอันตรายหรือไม่

RO: Nesupravegheat-Actualizări și autoeliminare periculoase?

RU: Автоматические обновления и автоматическое удаление опасны?

VI: Không giám sát-Nâng cấp và tự động xóa có nguy hiểm không?

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