2016-03-14 Michael BoelenSoftware 3 comments

Upgrading External Packages with unattended-upgrade

Upgrading External Packages with unattended-upgrade The unattended-upgrade tool is a great way to keep your system automatically updated. While you might not always want to do that for all packages, it definitely can be a great way to assist in your security efforts. In that case, tell it to track security updates and install the related packages. If you are using third-party packages (e.g. via PPAs), the system has no idea about security updates for those packages. So you need […]

2016-02-15 (last updated at March 12th, 2017) Michael BoelenSystem Administration 6 comments

Automatic Security Updates with DNF

DNF: Automatic Security Updates The Dandified YUM tool, DNF, has become a powerful package manager for systems running Fedora. As it looks now, it will become also the default package manager for CentOS 8 and RHEL 8. One of the benefits from dnf is the option to retrieve security information very easily. This allows us to use it for automatic security patching of our Linux systems. Let’s explore the options and see how dnf-automatic can help us with fully automated […]

2016-01-25 (last updated at October 12th, 2016) Michael BoelenSoftware Leave a comment

Showing Available Security Updates with DNF

Checking Security Updates for your Software Packages DNF is the default package manager since Fedora 22. As it is considered to be a better version of YUM, some of our Lynis users asked for DNF support. With focus on auditing and security patching, we definitely wanted to see that for ourselves. While building support, I’ve gathered the most important commands. In this blog post we will have a look how we can leverage the DNF output to show only the […]

2015-06-04 Michael BoelenSystem Administration 5 comments

Determine Processes Which Need a Restart with checkrestart/needrestart

Determine which processes need a restart after software patching Proper software patch management helps reducing weaknesses on your systems. But even if you patched an outdated system, old processes and libraries can continue to run in memory. For example when a library is updated, an active program might still use the old version. To really finish the process of software patching, we have to do more. This includes preparation, performing the update and finally check if we need a restart […]

2015-03-09 (last updated at September 26th, 2016) Michael BoelenAutomation, Software, System Administration 3 comments

Using unattended-upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu

Using unattended-upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu To counter the biggest threat to software packages, they should be updated on a regular basis. Vulnerabilities are discovered on a daily basis, which also requires we monitor daily. Software patching takes time, especially when testing and reboots are needed. Fortunately, systems running Debian and Ubuntu can use unattended-upgrades to achieve automated patch management for security updates. Installation With most software packages, unattended-upgrades has to be installed. root@system:~# apt-get install unattended-upgrades If you are […]