Objective
The objective is to disable automatic updates on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
Operating System and Software Versions
- Operating System: – Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
Requirements
Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or via sudo
command is required.
Conventions
- # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of
sudo
command - $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user
Other Versions of this Tutorial
Instructions
Warning:Disabling automatic updates comes with a security risk. Once automatic updates are disabled, use $ sudo apt update
and $ sudo apt upgrade
to keep your system updated manually.
There are some situations when you may want to disable automatic updates. For example if you receive these error messages:
Reading package lists... Done E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
The above is a result of a triggered automatic updates procedure where apt
locked down the /var/lib/apt/lists/lock file, thus the administrator is prevented from installing new packages and is forced to wait until the automatic updates refresh cycle is completed.
Disable Automatic Updates from Command Line
Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
to disable automatic updates from the command line:
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
Once you have the file opened, switch off the Update-Package-Lists
directive from 1
to 0
as shown below on Line 1:
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
Disable Automatic Updates from Graphical User Interface
You can also disable automatic updates on your Ubuntu 18.04 desktop using the graphical user interface: