Post by Bálint RéczeyPost by Sean WhittonThe version of unattended-upgrades in stretch defaulted to not upgrading
the stable suite. It would install only security updates.
The version of unattended-upgrades in buster upgrades both the stable
suite and security upgrades. I.e. it will pull in point releases too.
[...]
It is documented in NEWS.Debian in the entry for 0.99 already and I
agree that it would be nice to include it in the release notes as
well.
The text there is
# Unattended-upgrades in previous versions defaulted to install
# security updates only on Debian by using the label=Debian-Security
# origin pattern. Now it is changed to allow updates with label=Debian,
# which allows applying stable updates in stable releases and following
# all package updates in testing and unstable.
#
# In stable releases this unlocks installation of security updates
# depending on package versions present only in stable updates.
#
# Note that testing and unstable can often contain packages for which
# installation or upgrade performed by unattended-upgrades fails and
# requires the administrator to fix the system later.
#
# If you would like to prevent unattended-upgrades from performing
# updates please run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades".
Here's a suggested short version for the release-notes, which leaves
out technical details and assumes the reader is running stable:
<section id="unattended-upgrades">
<!-- stretch to buster -->
<title>Unattended-upgrades for stable point releases</title>
<para>
Previous versions of <systemitem
role="package">unattended-upgrades</systemitem> defaulted to installing
only upgrades that came from the security suite. In buster it now also
automates upgrading to the latest stable point release. For details, see
the package's NEWS.Debian file.
</para>
</section>
The attached patch puts this text in whats-new.dbk just after the
section "apt-sandboxing".
Meanwhile. wouldn't it also make sense to update the package description?
# This package 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.
# .
# This script is the backend for the APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade
# option.
That sentence is already a bit complicated, so I would suggest
breaking it up, maybe like this:
This package provides a script which can perform automatic unattended downloads
and installations of packages from the security suite. By default it will also
handle point releases on stable and rolling upgrades on testing/unstable. It
takes care to only install packages from the configured APT source, and checks
for dpkg prompts about configuration file changes.
.
It is used as the backend for the APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade option.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package