Disabling update-notifier in Ubuntu 12.04

My team manages a number of user workstations running Ubuntu 12.04 “Precise Pangolin”. We install a standard APT configuration which automatically upgrades these PCs as soon as packages are available, without prompting and without a GUI. Therefore we also need to disable the update-notifier so it doesn’t display these packages to the user.

This isn’t necessary if your user doesn’t have admin access (is a member of the sudo group). Update-notifier won’t run if you don’t have sudo.

Method 1: Prevent update-notifier from starting at login

As the user, open a terminal and run:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cp /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop ~/.config/autostart/
editor ~/.config/autostart/update-notifier.desktop

Find this line:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60

And replace it with:

X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false

Now log out and in again, or kill the running update-notifier:

killall update-notifier

Or just paste all this into the shell:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cp /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop ~/.config/autostart/
sed -i 's/X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60/X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false/' ~/.config/autostart/update-notifier.desktop
killall update-notifier

Method 2: Prevent update-notifier from starting at login for all users

The above method works only on the user that is currently logged in. This is useful if you have a one-user workstation. But if you want to make a system-wide change, run:

sudo sed -i 's/X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60/X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false/' /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop

Method 3: Let update-notifier run, but disable notifications

This method allows update-notifier to run in the background, but tells it not to display notifications. As the first method, this only works on the current user.

• Start dconf-editor from the Unity menu or run dialog.
• Browse to “com.ubuntu.update-notifier”.
• Set “no-show-notifications” to true.

Or just run this handy command:

gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier no-show-notifications true

Enabling automatic security updates without update-notifier

If you’ve done the above and still want security updates, do the following. First Create /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades containing:

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

Then edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades and uncomment or add:

Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
	"${distro_id} ${distro_codename}";
	"${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-security";
	"${distro_id} ${distro_codename}-updates";
};