There are new vulnerabilities being disclosed every day that put your server at a security risk. This stress of updating your system for the latest security patch or application update can be relieved by automating the update process using the dnf-automatic command.

The dnf-automatic is a command-line tool for RHEL-based distributions such as Fedora, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, etc., for automating the update process using systemd timers. It will periodically check the system for the latest release or security update and update them without your interaction as a background process.

Also Read: How to Exclude Packages from Update using DNF in RHEL Linux

This will ease your concern about the security risk involved on your server and allow you to focus more on the product, but remember there are some flaws using this method, which we will discuss later on.

Install dnf-automatic in RHEL-based distributions

The first step will be to install the dnf-automatic package on your system using the below command.

$ sudo dnf install dnf-automatic

Below is the output of the above command.

Press “Y” to start the installation process, and once it is finished, run the following code to verify the installation.

$ dnf-automatic --help

Below is the output of the above command.

Now you can easily move on to the configuration part.

Configuring dnf-automatic in RHEL-based distributions

The configuration file for the dnf-automatic package is automatic.conf located on the /etc/dnf/automatic.conf path. Simply open it with your choice of text editor.

$ sudo nano /etc/dnf/automatic.conf

Below is the output of the above command.

For the upgrade_type=default, I would suggest using the upgrade_type=security setting. To know more, check the FAQ at the end. Next, make sure to set apply_updates=yes otherwise dnf-automatic will only download the packages without applying them.

How do you want to get notified when a package update is applied? This can be done using the emit_via option from its three emitters.

• email emitter will send the report via email.
• stdio emitter will show system notification.
• motd sends the result to /etc/motd file.

The stdio and motd emitters do not require any extra changes. For the email, emitter you need to change the below settings.

emit_via = email                 # Define the type of emitter in use
email_from = [email protected]    # The address to send email messages from.
email_to = root                  # List of addresses to send messages to.
email_host = localhost           # Name of the host/ip(smtp) to connect to send email messages.

After making the changes, save and close the configuration file.

Start and Enable dnf-automatic in RHEL-based distributions

The last setup is to start the dnf-automatic daemon service to start scheduling automatic updates in RHEL-based distributions.

$ sudo systemctl enable --now dnf-automatic.timer

Below is the output of the above command.

Use the below command to check the status of the dnf-automatic.

$ systemctl list-timers *dnf-*

Below is the output of the above command.

Also read:How to Install and Configure Mutt Command-Line Email Client

In future, when there is an update available from the repository of the packages you have installed, it will automatically download and apply those updates without any interaction from you and notify you accordingly, depending upon the emit_via emitter.

FAQ

I hope this guide will be useful for you. If you have any queries, let us know in the comment section.