How can I keep my Raspbian "Wheezy" up to date?

Question

Is there a sort of update tool for my Raspbian Debian 7 (Wheezy) package?

I installed php and lighttpd, and I want to keep those automatically updated for when bugs are found.

Answer 1

You need to enter some commands into the command line. First of all:

apt-get update  

(this will update the sources of software)

apt-get upgrade  

(this will upgrade everything to the latest version)

Answer 2

The unattended-upgrades package is the way to automate updating the OS in these debian-family distributions. Follow instructions found in here.

Basically you have to install the package:

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades

and add to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic the following:

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

Additionally (since it seems like the porting of the package has not been flawless), change the following line at the first section of /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades:

        "origin=Debian,archive=stable,label=Debian-Security";

to

//        "origin=Debian,archive=stable,label=Debian-Security";
        "origin=Raspbian";

Now your system keeps itself up-to-date automatically.

Answer 3

Dist:

 $ sudo apt-get update
 $ sudo apt-get upgrade 

Rpi-update first time: install git and certifications for reach github.

$ sudo apt-get install ca-certificates
$ sudo apt-get install git-core
$ sudo wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O /usr/bin/rpi-update
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update

update firmware

$ sudo rpi-update
$ sudo ldconfig
$ sudo reboot

Rpi-update after:

$ sudo rpi-update
$ sudo ldconfig
$ sudo reboot

rpi-update

Answer 4

rpi-update can now be fetched directly via apt-get, so there would be no need to deal with Wget. So here is now the updated way:

Dist:

 $ sudo apt-get update
 $ sudo apt-get upgrade 

You need to reboot the Raspberry Pi now, otherwise the new kernel would not be used!

Rpi-update first time: Install Git and certifications to reach GitHub.

$ sudo apt-get install ca-certificates
$ sudo apt-get install git-core
$ sudo apt-get install rpi-update

Update firmware

$ sudo rpi-update
$ sudo reboot

rpi-update

Answer 5

You could also write a little script with your apt-get steps in there and run it on a schedule once a day / however often you like, that's what I've done.

How to set up a cron job on the Pi:

http://www.wexoo.net/20130406/running-cron-jobs-on-raspberry-pi-in-raspbmc

How to write a bash script:

https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/284789-writing-a-simple-bash-script-

My script was just a simple

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade -yes
apt-get dist-upgrade -yes
apt-get clean

and I had it logging the output to a file with >> at the end of each line, e.g. apt-get update >> autoupdate.txt.

It's debatable as to how good an idea it is to do this though!

Answer 6

The Art of Web site has a wonderfull guide for Debian Wheezy that I only had to modify one line for it to work on my testing RPi. The link will take you to thier guide on cron-apt; which has been peraphrased bellow with modification for RPi repos' system explained.

Install cron-apt

sudo apt-get install cron-apt

Default configuration, actions, and custom configs can be found with

ls -hal /etc/cron-apt/config

ls -hal /etc/cron-apt/action.d/

ls -hal /etc/cron-apt/config.d/

Append the following to /etc/cron-apt/config file with sudo tee -a to enable emails to be sent with verbos information on the actions taken during automated update

echo 'MAILON="output"' | sudo tee -a /etc/cron-apt/config

echo 'DEBUG="verbose"' | sudo tee -a /etc/cron-apt/config

Logging is dumped to : /var/log/cron-apt/log

Make new action file for updating only security related packeges with touch command and add one line with sudo tee command; others will be downloaded but wait for sys-admin to install non-security updates. Allerts of updates and output will be emailed to root user or sys-admin for further review and/or actions to be taken.

sudo touch /etc/cron-apt/action.d/5-security

echo 'upgrade -y -o APT::Get::Show-Upgraded=true' | sudo tee -a /etc/cron-apt/action.d/5-security

Make new configuration file to use above action; spicifficly using /etc/apt/sources.list.d/security.list as the path for security updates. The file path maybe differant on your system if not fully based on Debian Linux; RPi now uses mirror director so /etc/apt/sources.list should be used instead, however, this can not be advised for production level servers because it'll update non-security updates too.

sudo touch /etc/cron-apt/config.d/5-security

echo 'OPTIONS="-o quiet=1 -o APT::Get::List-Cleanup=false -o Dir::Etc::SourceList=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/security.list -o Dir::Etc::SourceParts=\"/dev/null\""' | sudo tee -a /etc/cron-apt/config.d/5-security

Wait a day for cron-apt to update your system and check local logs with the following to see what was updated while you slept

sudo cat /var/log/cron-apt/log

This has been tested on one RPi to work for updating every package as well as an Unbuntu PC that only updates security related packages. So I feel that it is one of the more portable options availabe. The other package for automated updates, suggested by grassroot (thank you, I'm going to test it next), unattended-upgrades seemes like another great option to automate the update process.