How to Ensure Ubuntu’s Unattended Upgrades Are Turned On

What Are Unattended Upgrades?

The Unattended Upgrades feature of Ubuntu (and other Debian-based distros) ensures that important security patches for installed packages are automatically downloaded and installed without needing any manual intervention from an end-user (hence the word unattended).

A common misconception about this feature, is that when enabled, it will cause your device to regularly automatically restart. This is not true unless you specifically opt-in to that behavior by going through the following steps:

1. Opening the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades config file
2. Explicitly setting Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true"
3. Installing the optional update-notifier-common package.

For more information, please read Ubuntu’s Documentation.

Do I Really Need Unattended Upgrades?

Like most things on Linux, there are strong debates for and against enabling Ubuntu’s unattended upgrades package.

The primary argument against a solution like unattended-upgrades is that by automatically upgrading packages on a Linux device, one day, a less stable package may install and cause stability or user-experience issues. While this argument is technically valid, the fact remains that without this package installed and enabled, it’s more far more likely that a Linux device will host software with severe and remotely exploitable security vulnerabilities. This is especially true for end-user devices running Linux.

Further bolstering the argument for turning it on, Canonical (the creators of Ubuntu) has opted to pre-install the unattended-upgrades package and enable it across the Ubuntu operating system. We highly recommend users keep this setting on.

How To Enable Unattended Upgrades

From the User Interface (Gnome Desktop)

By default, Ubuntu Desktop installations include an app called Software & Updates (internally referred to as update-manager). This program is capable of modifying the requisite files on your device to ensure Unattended Upgrades are correctly enabled.

To use it, simply follow these steps.

1. Launch the Software & Updates app (you can also run update-manager from the terminal).

2. Once opened, select the Updates tab.

3. Ensure the When there are security updates option is set to Download and install automatically. Complete any authentication prompts if they are displayed.

4. Click Close.

From the Terminal

1. Verify the package is installed with sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades -y

2. Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades which will then display the following interactive prompt:

3. Select yes. Once completed, the app will create the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades with the correct settings. There may be an existing/conflicting installation screen that looks like the screenshot below. If you see that screen, simply replace the file with the new version to get the default behavior.

How To Determine If Unattended Upgrades Is Enabled with Osquery

Osquery (an open-source tool for querying the state of the OS) is capable of reading the contents of specific configuration files like /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades using an integration with the Augeas configuration parsing project.

Osquery uses SQL to query the system’s current state. Assuming you have the correct lense installed, you can use Osquery SQL you can use the following query to get the determine if Unattended upgrades is configured correctly.

SELECT
  MAX(CASE WHEN label='Update-Package-Lists' THEN value END) as update_package_list,
  MAX(CASE WHEN label='Unattended-Upgrade' THEN value END) as unattended_upgrade,
FROM augeas
WHERE path = '/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades'

How Does Kolide Remediate This Problem?

This problem cannot be remediated through traditional automation with tools like an MDM. You need to be able to stop devices that fail this check form authenticating to your SaaS apps and then give end-users precise instructions on how to unblock their device.

Kolide's Okta Integration does exactly that. Onece integrated in your sign-in flow, Kolide will automatically associate devices with your users' Okta identities. From there, it can block any device that exhibits this problem and then provide the user, step-by-step instructions on how to fix it. Once fixed, Kolide immediately unblocks their device. Watch a demo to find out more.