I am using unattended-upgrades across multiple servers. I would like package updates to be rolled out gradually, either randomly or to a subset of test/staging machines first. Is there a way to do that for APT on Ubuntu?

An obvious option is to set some machines to update on Monday and the others to update on Wednesday, but that only gives me only weekly updates…

The goal of course is to avoid a Crowdstrike-like situation on my Ubuntu machines.

edit: For example. An updated openssh-server comes out. One fifth of the machines updates that day, another fifth updates the next day, and the rest updates 3 days later.

  • digdilem@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    Small number of machines?

    Disable unattended-upgrades and use crontab to schedule this on the days of the week you want.

    Eg, Monday each week at 4 am - every combination of dates and days is possible with crontab. 2nd Tuesdays in a month? No problem.

    0 4 * * MON apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && reboot

    (You can also be more subtle by calling a script that does the above, and also does things like check whether a reboot is needed first)

    Dozens, hundreds or thousands of machines? Use a scheduling automation system like Uyuni. That way you can put machines into System Groups and set patching schedule like that. And you can also define groups of machines, either ad-hoc or with System Groups, to do emergency patching like that day’s openssh critical vuln by sending a remote command like the above to a batch at a time.

    All of that is pretty normal SME/Enterprise sysadminning, so there’s some good tools. I like Uyuni, but others have their preference.

    However - Crowdstrike on Linux operates much like CS on Windows - they will push out updates, and you have little or no control over when or what. They aren’t unique in this - pretty much every AV needs to be able to push updates to clients when new malware is detected. But! In the example of Crowdstrike breaking EL 9.4 a few months ago when it took exception to a new kernel and refused to boot, then yes, scheduled group patching would have minimised the damage. It did so for us, but we only have CS installed on a handful of Linux machines.