From:    Tomas Vinar
To:    Mike Patterson [CSCF]
Subject:    Debian automated security update
Date:    Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:08:22 -0500 (EST)

Here is the routine I am testing on my workstation (note: mine is woody,
so some things are different from sarge):

1. Install package cron-apt
2. Create files /etc/apt/apt-security.conf and
   /etc/apt/sources-security.list as follows:

element:/etc/apt# cat /etc/apt/apt-security.conf
APT::Cache-Limit 10000000;
Dir::Etc::SourceList /etc/apt/sources-security.list;

element:/etc/apt# cat /etc/apt/sources-security.list
deb http://security.debian.org woody/updates main contrib non-free

3. remove everything from /etc/cron/cron-apt/action.d, and instead create
the following two files:

element:/etc/cron-apt/action.d# cat 0-security
update --config-file /etc/apt/apt-security.conf
upgrade --config-file /etc/apt/apt-security.conf -y
autoclean --config-file /etc/apt/apt-security.conf -y

element:/etc/cron-apt/action.d# cat 1-update
update

4. You can also edit some options in /etc/cron-apt/config to e-mail
somebody, if updates fail, etc.

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I will let you know, if this approach works reasonably well.

Hope this helps,

Tomas