Or asked the other way around: How long do you keep your servers running without installing any software updates?
update means something like
sudo dnf update
or something …
apt-get upgrade
apt-get update
Those apt commands are in a less-good order. It’s usually better to update apt, then upgrade the system.
I upgrade as soon as reasonably possible after the notification appears, if the system isn’t on auto-upgrade.
I do
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgradeIs there any reason to not combine the commands since the output always prompts prior to changes anyway?
When I remember. About once a month.
Same here. No auto updates, no touching of a stable system without my manual intervention. 😅
Last thing I need in my life is a broken system at home when I don’t have time for it!
Unattended-upgrade does security-only patching once every 4 hours (in rough sync with my local mirror)
Full upgrades are done weekly, accompanied by a reboot
I find that the split between security patching and feature/bug patching maintains a healthy balance knowing when something is likely to break but never being behind on the latest cve.
Well, one of the reasons I’m using debian on my server is so I can kinda forget about it…
I’ll update maybe once a month, or every couple months. I don’t always restart though, so my kernel is probably a bit behind :'D
On Windows, almost never since it was a disruptive shitshow. Now that I’ve got everything running Linux it’s weekly. Often sooner if I happen to be remoting in and manually update.
Only mostly when I want to. Which tends to be on Mondays and Saturdays.
I’m running Sid on servers, so automatic updates are actually a risk. Used to be Debian Stable, but maaan the docker and podman improvements… make me drool.
Every day or at least once a week. Should automate it.
Should; Could; How high of a priority is this update automation for you? This is also how I run my server. Configuration possibilities are infinite.
I run Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS with k3s. I update my container versions every few months, though not everything I’m running all at once. I update the actual system packages via apt maybe once a year and end up nuking and re-installing everything every couple years on average. I deliberately block all inbound WAN traffic in my firewall and use k8s network policies to aggressively limit egress WAN connections because I’m aware that I’m bad about keeping things up to date.
Weekly. Cronjob.
If I have something serious, I will set up automatic upgrades. If short downtimes are ok, also with automatic reboots when the kernel updates, but if they are not, with notifications that I should go reboot them.
If it’s not anything serious, whenever I remember to.
everyday to once a month, depending how often I use the server
IME usually waiting longer to apply larger updates causes more issues than smaller and more frequent ones
When something doesn’t work. I.e. when an app update causes incompatibility with a service. I think I have one server that’s a few years without an update (distro version may actually be EOL for all I know).
Why probably so may unpatched issues.
Ain’t broke and I can’t be bothered to update. Not accessible publicly either. It also runs some software with very specific and brittle dependencies and I don’t care to risk breaking it. If distro is EOL (probably is) then it’d be a pretty time consuming getting everything set up again.
Every couple of days. I don’t auto-update, but I’ve streamlined the process to the point that I can just open a single web page and see the number of pending updates for every system on my network, docker containers included, each one with a button. Clicking the button applies the update and reboots if necessary. So it takes about 15 seconds of effort to update everything, which is why I don’t mind doing it so often.
Apt update and upgrade happen automatically.
my nixos containers and the podman containers inside them update nightly around 03:00





