Tag Archives: linux

Automate System Updates in Ubuntu

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If you’re administering your server in Ubuntu, you might want to set up a cron to update and upgrade your software each night.  There’s an easy way to do this thanks to the convenient Ubuntu package cron-apt.

To automate daily bug and security updates to your Linux system, first install cron-apt with the following command:

apt-get install cron-apt

Then configure it to email you the results each time it runs, edit /etc/cron-apt/config to include the following lines:

MAILTO="you@emailaddress.com"
MAILON="always"

Lastly, link it to cron.daily by running the following command:

sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/cron-apt /etc/cron.daily/

This should keep your system nicely up-to-date.  If you’re feeling a little wild (and you’ve backed up everything), you might also want to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu every once in a while (but this should never be automated).

HOW TO find php.ini in Ubuntu

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Looking for the primary php.ini in Ubuntu to change some default settings across Apache?  No problemo.  Here are three different options for finding it:

  • Try running this <?php phpinfo(); ?> through your PHP interpreter.  This will show you where your main php.ini file is.
  • Or you can try searching for it in the shell:  find / -name php.ini
  • If all else fails, give it the old college try, and see if my setting works for you:  /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini (I’m on Ubuntu 9.10 – karmic).

This should just about do it for you, old chap.