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Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades

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  Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades Ondřej Grover <ondrej.grover@gmail.com> - 2015-10-11 10:40 +0200
    Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by  unattended-upgrades moxalt <moxalt@riseup.net> - 2015-10-11 20:00 +0200
      Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades Ondřej Grover <ondrej.grover@gmail.com> - 2015-10-12 19:50 +0200
        Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by  unattended-upgrades moxalt <moxalt@riseup.net> - 2015-10-13 16:10 +0200
          Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades Ondřej Grover <ondrej.grover@gmail.com> - 2015-10-13 19:30 +0200
            Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by  unattended-upgrades moxalt <moxalt@riseup.net> - 2015-10-15 07:50 +0200
              Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by  unattended-upgrades David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2015-10-15 17:10 +0200

#158834 — Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades

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Hello,

I'm trying to configure unattended-upgrades to include apt-listchanges
output in the mail it sends me. I had a look at the Python
script /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade and it seems it forces apt-listchanges
to send a separate email. Is there a way around this?
One way I though of was to make apt-listchanges use the plain frontend and
include the whole dpkg log in the mail. However, I haven't found a setting
for that. Is there a way to set this? I think the problem might be that the
dpkg output is never returned in the script for some reason [1].
Failing that, what would be the best (in terms of Debian maintenance) way
to make a modification to the script? I figured I could make my own deb
package with a changed script, but what would be the most Debian-way-like
way to do that?

Kind regards,
Ondřej Grover

[1]
https://github.com/mvo5/unattended-upgrades/blob/debian/sid/unattended-upgrade#L833

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#158884 — Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades

So you want to combine the output of unattended-upgrades itself and
apt-listchanges into a single e-mail? Why?

Also, couldn't you just edit the script to make it function as you want it?

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#158978

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Because I get such emails for more hosts and it's inconvenient to try to
match up the changelogs with reports. I would also like to see the full log
for needrestart output.

As I asked in my original question, I'd like to know what the most
"Debian-proper" way for editing such scripts is. If that is to roll my own
package with a patch, I wonder what the recommended and most maintainable
way is these days.

Kind regards,
Ondřej Grover

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 7:52 PM, moxalt <moxalt@riseup.net> wrote:

> So you want to combine the output of unattended-upgrades itself and
> apt-listchanges into a single e-mail? Why?
>
> Also, couldn't you just edit the script to make it function as you want it?
>
>

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#159038 — Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades

On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 19:43:00 +0200, Ondřej Grover <ondrej.grover@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Because I get such emails for more hosts and it's inconvenient to try to
> match up the changelogs with reports. I would also like to see the full log
> for needrestart output.
> 
> As I asked in my original question, I'd like to know what the most
> "Debian-proper" way for editing such scripts is. If that is to roll my own
> package with a patch, I wonder what the recommended and most maintainable
> way is these days.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Ondřej Grover

The most "Debian-proper" way? I'm not really sure- I would edit the script
myself and just keep that as the local version. The only problem is that newer
versions of the package would probably overwrite it- but they may offer a
'local version of config' menu like GRUB and libpolkit do. Try it. The worst
that could happen is that you'll have to make the appropriate edits again after
an upgrade- but you'll probably be fine if you keep a backup.

Rolling your own package seems a bit overkill for what you're trying to do.

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#159059

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>
> The most "Debian-proper" way? I'm not really sure- I would edit the script
> myself and just keep that as the local version. The only problem is that
> newer
> versions of the package would probably overwrite it- but they may offer a
> 'local version of config' menu like GRUB and libpolkit do.

That happens for conffiles which are files under /etc or are listed in
debian/conffiles in the deb archive. So that would again mean I'd have to
modify the package

> Rolling your own package seems a bit overkill for what you're trying to do.
>
It wouldn't be an overkill if there was a simple way to manage a local
repository and packages with custom modifications. I have looked around and
it didn't seem that straight-forward. Is there some helper tool perhaps?

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#159176 — Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades

On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 19:22:55 +0200, Ondřej Grover <ondrej.grover@gmail.com>
wrote:

> >
> > The most "Debian-proper" way? I'm not really sure- I would edit the script
> > myself and just keep that as the local version. The only problem is that
> > newer
> > versions of the package would probably overwrite it- but they may offer a
> > 'local version of config' menu like GRUB and libpolkit do.
> 
> That happens for conffiles which are files under /etc or are listed in
> debian/conffiles in the deb archive. So that would again mean I'd have to
> modify the package
> 
> > Rolling your own package seems a bit overkill for what you're trying to do.
> >
> It wouldn't be an overkill if there was a simple way to manage a local
> repository and packages with custom modifications. I have looked around and
> it didn't seem that straight-forward. Is there some helper tool perhaps?

Even if you were able to manage a local repository of some sort, the only way
you would be able to prevent your custom .debs from being overwritten is by
assigning them really high version numbers so that they are never overwritten
by updates. Of course, you wouldn't be able to get official Debian updates that
way, which could cause problems later. The same is true if you just made a
modified standalone .deb.

You have two options- either make a custom package once and for all (but never
get updates) or edit it locally and backup your edits so that you can restore
them after updates. I would take the second option. It's not as if
apt-listchanges and dpkg get updated every day- and when they do it's just a
simple copy-paste job from your backed up script.

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#159202 — Re: Putting apt-listchanges and dpkg output in mail sent by unattended-upgrades

Quoting moxalt (moxalt@riseup.net):
> On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 19:22:55 +0200, Ondřej Grover <ondrej.grover@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> > It wouldn't be an overkill if there was a simple way to manage a local
> > repository and packages with custom modifications. I have looked around and
> > it didn't seem that straight-forward. Is there some helper tool perhaps?
> 
> Even if you were able to manage a local repository of some sort, the only way
> you would be able to prevent your custom .debs from being overwritten is by
> assigning them really high version numbers so that they are never overwritten
> by updates. Of course, you wouldn't be able to get official Debian updates that
> way, which could cause problems later. The same is true if you just made a
> modified standalone .deb.

You can of course leave the version number alone (to indicate the base
version of your customisations) and just use a higher epoch value on
your package to protect it from being overwritten. This would also
allow you to set up an alert from, say, cron if your version number
(without epoch) didn't match the (new) version available from Debian,
so you would know it was about time to check/rerun your customisations.

> You have two options- either make a custom package once and for all (but never
> get updates) or edit it locally and backup your edits so that you can restore
> them after updates. I would take the second option. It's not as if
> apt-listchanges and dpkg get updated every day- and when they do it's just a
> simple copy-paste job from your backed up script.

Cheers,
David.

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