aptcron

aptcron is a simple script that sends out E-Mails of available updates in your APT index. It is designed to be fully configurable via files in the /etc/aptcron.d/ directory, so you can easily deploy configuration via your own Debian packages.

Configuration options include:

• Update your APT index before creating the list of updates.
• Only list updates it hasn't already seen in the previous run.
• Delay execution to a random time within a configurable timeframe.
• Configure E-Mail Subject/From/To including runtime variables.
• Use an external SMTP mail server (including authentication and STARTTLS).

Mails are sent to root on localhost by default. They include an X-AptCron: Yes and an X-AptCron-Host: $hostname header for easy filtering.

Requirements

aptcron is written in Python and runs with Python2.7+, including Python3.2+. The only library required is python-apt, which you can install with apt get install python-apt (or python3-apt). If you want to use the --random-time parameter (see below), you need a running at daemon.

The script sends out E-Mails with available updates (this is its primary purpose, after all), so you need an SMTP-server available.

Installation

APT-repositories for the package will be available very soon.

If you want to upload a Debian package to your own custom APT repository, this repository is ready to be built with git-buildpackage.

Configuration

The script runs fine without any custom configuration, if you are happy with the defaults.

The behaviour can be configured either via the command-line (which always takes precedence) or via configuration files, it will parse, in order: /etc/aptcron.conf, /etc/aptcron.d/*.conf, ./aptcron.conf and ./aptcron.d/*.conf. Files in *.d directories are parsed in alphabetic order. aptcron will merge all configuration files together, so you can split your configuration into as many files as you like.

Almost every configuration option can be given in the config files or via the command-line, where they have to be prefixed with --. The syntax, available configuration options and their default values can be seen in this example configuration file:

[DEFAULT]
# If set to 'yes', aptcron won't update the index:
no-update: no
# If set to 'yes', aptcron will only list packages that wouldn't install any
# new dependencies.
no-dist-upgrade: no
# If set to 'yes', aptcron only lists updates it hasn't seen previously:
only-new: no
# Do not send mail, just print to stdout:
no-mail: yes
# Set to "yes" to send an E-Mail even if no packages are found:
force: no
# Random delay: If you give a timerange (e.g. '2:00-8:00' or '-8:00', execute
# aptcron at a random time within the given time.
random-time: no

# E-Mail: Configure how the E-Mail you will receive looks like. You can
#         customize values using python formatting, available keys are:
#         {host}, {shorthost} (leftmost part of the host) and {num} (number of packages).
#
# The From: header used (default: root@{host}).
mail-from: root@{host}
# The To: header used (default: root@{host}).
mail-to: root@{host}
# The subject used.
mail-subject: [aptcron] {shorthost}: {num} APT updates

# SMTP: SMTP-related options.
# The SMTP server/port:
smtp-host: localhost
smtp-port: 25
# SMTP user/password (default: no authentication):
smtp-user: 
smtp-password:
# Wether to use STARTTLS. Set to "yes" to use it if available, "force" will fail
# if STARTTLS is not available, "no" will not use STARTTLS at all:
smtp-starttls: force

A few parameters that can only be given via the command-line (for obvious reasons):

--config CONFIG       Use an alternative config-file.
--section SECTION     Read section SECTION from the config files (default: DEFAULT)
--random-time [RANGE] Launch aptcron.py sometime in the given RANGE, e.g. '2:00-8:00'. If 
                      no RANGE is given, execute sometime between now and midnight.

The --random-time argument will cause aptcron to queue itself using the at daemon, any other commandline arguments will be passed to the delayed invocation. You can view the execution time using the atq command.

Cron configuration

aptcron is designed to be run by cron. The debian/ directory includes the cron.d-files installed by the aptcron-*-time packages.