updatectl — Control the system update service
updatectl
[OPTIONS...] {COMMAND} [TARGET...]
updatectl may be used to check for and install system updates managed by systemd-sysupdated.service(8).
The following commands are understood:
TARGET
[@VERSION
]]¶Show information about targets and their versions.
When no TARGET
is specified, this command lists all
available targets. When a TARGET
is specified without a
VERSION
, this command lists all known versions of the
specified target. If a VERSION
is specified, this command
lists all known information about the specific version.
See the example below for details of the output.
TARGET
…]¶Check if any updates are available for the specified targets. If no targets are specified, all available targets will be checked for updates.
See the example below for details of the output.
TARGET
[@VERSION
]…]¶Update the specified targets to the specified versions. If a target is specified without a version, then it will be updated to the latest version. If no targets are specified, then all available targets will be updated to the latest version.
TARGET
…]¶Clean up old versions of the specified targets. If no targets are specified, all available targets will be vacuumed.
FEATURE
]¶When no FEATURE
is specified, this command lists all
optional features.
When a FEATURE
is specified, this command lists all known information
about that feature.
FEATURE
…, disable FEATURE
…¶These commands enable or disable optional features. See sysupdate.features(5). These commands always operate on the host system.
By default, these commands will only change the system's configuration by creating or deleting
drop-in files; they will not immediately download the enabled features, or clean up after the
disabled ones.
Enabled features will be downloaded and installed the next time the target is updated, and disabled
transfers will be cleaned up the next time the target is updated or vacuumed.
Pass --now
to immediately apply these changes.
-h
, --help
¶--version
¶The following commands are understood:
--reboot
¶When used with the update command, reboots the system after updates finish applying. If any update fails, the system will not reboot.
When used with the enable or disable commands and the
--now
flag, reboots the system after download or clean-up finish applying.
--offline
¶When used with the list command, disables fetching metadata from the network. This makes the list command only return information that is available locally (i.e. about versions already installed on the system).
--now
¶When used with the enable command, downloads and installs the enabled features. When used with the disable command, deletes all resources downloaded by the disabled features.
-H
, --host=
¶Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a
username and hostname separated by "@
", to
connect to. The hostname may optionally be suffixed by a
port ssh is listening on, separated by ":
", and then a
container name, separated by "/
", which
connects directly to a specific container on the specified
host. This will use SSH to talk to the remote machine manager
instance. Container names may be enumerated with
machinectl -H
HOST
. Put IPv6 addresses in brackets.
--no-pager
¶Do not pipe output into a pager.
--no-legend
¶Do not print the legend, i.e. column headers and the footer with hints.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL
¶The maximum log level of emitted messages (messages with a higher
log level, i.e. less important ones, will be suppressed). Takes a comma-separated list of values. A
value may be either one of (in order of decreasing importance) emerg
,
alert
, crit
, err
,
warning
, notice
, info
,
debug
, or an integer in the range 0…7. See
syslog(3)
for more information. Each value may optionally be prefixed with one of console
,
syslog
, kmsg
or journal
followed by a
colon to set the maximum log level for that specific log target (e.g.
SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug,console:info
specifies to log at debug level except when
logging to the console which should be at info level). Note that the global maximum log level takes
priority over any per target maximum log levels.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_COLOR
¶A boolean. If true, messages written to the tty will be colored according to priority.
This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal, because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will color messages based on the log level on their own.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_TIME
¶A boolean. If true, console log messages will be prefixed with a timestamp.
This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal or a file, because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will attach timestamps based on the entry metadata on their own.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_LOCATION
¶A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with a filename and line number in the source code where the message originates.
Note that the log location is often attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_TID
¶A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with the current numerical thread ID (TID).
Note that the this information is attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_TARGET
¶The destination for log messages. One of
console
(log to the attached tty), console-prefixed
(log to
the attached tty but with prefixes encoding the log level and "facility", see syslog(3),
kmsg
(log to the kernel circular log buffer), journal
(log to
the journal), journal-or-kmsg
(log to the journal if available, and to kmsg
otherwise), auto
(determine the appropriate log target automatically, the default),
null
(disable log output).
$SYSTEMD_LOG_RATELIMIT_KMSG
¶ Whether to ratelimit kmsg or not. Takes a boolean.
Defaults to "true
". If disabled, systemd will not ratelimit messages written to kmsg.
$SYSTEMD_PAGER
¶Pager to use when --no-pager
is not given; overrides
$PAGER
. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER
nor $PAGER
are set, a
set of well-known pager implementations are tried in turn, including
less(1) and
more(1), until one is found. If
no pager implementation is discovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string
or the value "cat
" is equivalent to passing --no-pager
.
Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER
(as well as $PAGER
) will be silently ignored.
$SYSTEMD_LESS
¶Override the options passed to less (by default
"FRSXMK
").
Users might want to change two options in particular:
K
¶This option instructs the pager to exit immediately when Ctrl+C is pressed. To allow less to handle Ctrl+C itself to switch back to the pager command prompt, unset this option.
If the value of $SYSTEMD_LESS
does not include "K
",
and the pager that is invoked is less,
Ctrl+C will be ignored by the
executable, and needs to be handled by the pager.
X
¶This option instructs the pager to not send termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. It is set by default to allow command output to remain visible in the terminal even after the pager exits. Nevertheless, this prevents some pager functionality from working, in particular paged output cannot be scrolled with the mouse.
Note that setting the regular $LESS
environment variable has no effect
for less invocations by systemd tools.
See less(1) for more discussion.
$SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET
¶Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8
", if
the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible).
Note that setting the regular $LESSCHARSET
environment variable has no effect
for less invocations by systemd tools.
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
¶Takes a boolean argument. When true, the "secure" mode of the pager is enabled; if
false, disabled. If $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
is not set at all, secure mode is enabled
if the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see
geteuid(2)
and sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3).
In secure mode, LESSSECURE=1
will be set when invoking the pager, and the pager shall
disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. When
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
is not set at all, pagers which are not known to implement
secure mode will not be used. (Currently only
less(1)
implements secure mode.)
Note: when commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or
pkexec(1), care
must be taken to ensure that unintended interactive features are not enabled. "Secure" mode for the
pager may be enabled automatically as describe above. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0
or not removing it from the inherited environment allows the user to invoke arbitrary commands. Note
that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER
or $PAGER
variables are to be
honoured, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
must be set too. It might be reasonable to completely
disable the pager using --no-pager
instead.
$SYSTEMD_COLORS
¶Takes a boolean argument. When true, systemd and related utilities
will use colors in their output, otherwise the output will be monochrome. Additionally, the variable can
take one of the following special values: "16
", "256
" to restrict the use
of colors to the base 16 or 256 ANSI colors, respectively. This can be specified to override the automatic
decision based on $TERM
and what the console is connected to.
$SYSTEMD_URLIFY
¶The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links should be generated in
the output for terminal emulators supporting this. This can be specified to override the decision that
systemd makes based on $TERM
and other conditions.
Note that these examples are just here for demonstration purposes, and the output of these commands is free to change. These commands are intended for display to a user. If you'd like machine-readable output, use the org.freedesktop.sysupdate1(5) D-Bus API directly.
Example 1. Output from list
$ updatectl list TARGET VERSION PATH host 48 sysupdate.d machine:fedora 38 /var/lib/machines/fedora.raw component:shim 15.7 sysupdate.shim.d $ updatectl list host VERSION STATUS ↻ 50 candidate 49 available ● 48 current 47 available 46 available 45 available [...] × 25 available+obsolete × 24 available+obsolete × 23 available+obsolete [...] $ updatectl list host@49 ↻ Version: 50 State: candidate ChangeLog: https://vendor.com/os/v50.html TYPE PATH PTUUID PTFLAGS SHA256 url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/uki_50 - - 90f6534282dd720f7a222fa781086990dc9c83e5c7499f085970a8e75e3ac349 url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/usr_50_981a5b84-a301-c819-f681-3e575fe16f16 981a5b84-a301-c819-f681-3e575fe16f16 - c0596ab1095258ec6f16c7c281a50d71c419a9f587c1ef858cfbbb69fb0a16f3 url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/verity_50_2f8d0f3b-f80a-6ddc-a556-3722bfbb5b79 2f8d0f3b-f80a-6ddc-a556-3722bfbb5b79 - e1e90a128e038b3a53455e55d1ca717c743aba31fe6b4b4624109df0243c6338 url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/verity_sig_50 - - ca3d163bab055381827226140568f3bef7eaac187cebd76878e0b63e9e442356
Example 2. Checking for and installing updates
$ updatectl check TARGET UPDATE host 48 → 50 machine:fedora 38 → 40 $ updatectl update host machine:fedora@39 [...] ✓ host@50 ✓ machine:fedora@39