Step 1: Enable Automatic Updates
================================

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A security best practice is to run the latest version of the software package.
The OVH |Securing a VPS| guides lists updating your system as the first
security recommendation. There are several methods that you can use to
configure automatic package upgrades.

You should configure one of these two methods:

#. Add ``apt-get`` as a cronjob
#. Install Ubuntu ``Unattended Upgrade`` Package

Using a cronjob
---------------
Any command that you run on the VPS that does not require user input
can be run as an unintended cronjob. An easy way to perform regular and
automatic updates is to create a cronjob.

.. caution:: This method of automatically updating your system is riskier
     than other methods because there are:

     #. no configuration options
     #. no safeguards if something goes wrong during an upgrade.

You've previously used the APT package manage to refresh, update, and
install packages. Let's review these commands.

apt-get update
  Retrieves a new lists of packages from the defined sources in
  ``/etc/apt/sources.list``

apt-get upgrade
  * Performs an upgrade on packages that have a newer version.
  * ``-y`` flag automatically answers *yes* to all prompts and runs
    non-interactively.

We can run manually update the VPS using ``apt-get update`` and
``apt-get upgrade``.

Previously, we combined these commands to run non-interactively in a single
line.

.. code-block:: bash

    apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

We can modify this line and then add it to a cronjob directly. We have to
specify the full path of apt-get.

This command will run apt-get to update and upgrade the system on the first
and third day of the week at 05:55. It then writes the upgrade status to
the file specified.

.. code-block:: bash

    55 5 * * 0,3 /usr/bin/apt-get update && /usr/bin/apt-get upgrade -y >> /var/log/apt/auto-updates.log

Using ``unattended-upgrades`` package
-------------------------------------
The ``unattended-upgrades`` package is a safer approach.

Post |Setup Automatic Security Updates On Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server| offers
simple instructions on how to set up the package.

Here are the Ubuntu Server Guides:

* |Automatic Updates-en| (English site)
* |Automatic Updates-ru| (Russian site)