NAME

freebsd-update-notify - Desktop notification for available updates

SYNOPSIS

/usr/local/libexec/freebsd-update-notify

DESCRIPTION

freebsd-update-notify is a script, normally run by cron(8), that checks for available base system updates (downloaded by freebsd-update(8)) and for elapsed time since the last successful updates performed by auto-update-system(8).

If updates have been downloaded by freebsd-update cron, or sufficient time has elapsed since the last successful auto-update-system (according to the "max-days-between-updates" in etc/freebsd-update-notify/freebsd-update-notify.conf), a popup message is displayed on the console asking the user if they would like to perform updates.

If the user clicks "Yes", then auto-update-system --defaults is run, to update installed packages, ports, and the base system.

If the user clicks "No", the time is recorded to /usr/local/etc/freebsd-update-notify/last-reminder, and the next notification will occur in the number of hours specified in the "hours-between-reminders" entry in /usr/local/etc/freebsd-update-notify/freebsd-update-notify.conf.

A sample crontab file is installed in /usr/local/etc/freebsd-update-notify/freebsd-update-notify.crontab.sample, and copied to /usr/local/etc/cron.d/freebsd-update-notify if the latter does not already exist. Users can edit /usr/local/etc/cron.d/freebsd-update-notify to change the schedule for running freebsd-update-notify downloads and checks. See crontab(5) for details about the crontab file format.

Other configuration options are found in /usr/local/etc/freebsd-update-notify/freebsd-update-notify.conf, which can also be edited to customize behavior.

FILES

/usr/local/etc/freebsd-update-notify/freebsd-update-notify.conf
/usr/local/etc/freebsd-update-notify/cron.d/freebsd-update-notify

SEE ALSO

freebsd-update(8), auto-update-system(8), auto-admin(8)

BUGS

The current implementation (a shell script using zenity) has limitations. For example, there is no way to disable keyboard input, so if a notification window pops up and grabs the keyboard while the user is typing, the user may inadvertently answer the dialog with a random keystroke. The best solution to this problem is reimplementing freebsd-update-notify as a standalone X11 app with full input control.

Please report bugs to the author and send patches in unified diff format. (man diff for more information)

AUTHOR

J. Bacon