automatic and semi-automatic updates

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 03:19:02PM -0500, David Feldman wrote:

> - I notice that in GNOME update-notifier runs with some options, so I 
> added that to my Xfce session (though I don't know what the options 
> are). But it takes up a lot of space in the system tray, even though no 
> updates are available. Any way to avoid that?

update-notifier shouldn't display anything unless updates are available
(that's how it works here, under GNOME).

> - I saw some docs regarding fully-automated updates with cron-apt and 
> apt-get. If I'm going to be installed updates anyway, is that a safe 
> thing to do?

Not in general, no.

> - As far as fully-automated updates go, the person who uses this 
> machine will have it turned off much of the time. Will a root cron job 
> run at startup if its time has been missed

Yes, that's what anacron does.

-- 
 - mdz