auto update ?

[bigvoo]

I use ubuntu 8.4 and it does automatic updates, I ususally just load without looking at them, is there any security risk with these ? Tonight the package manager said " working; on update available" and when i looked at it, it's a windows nt server something! why would i need any windows nt software on my linux machine ? thanks

[L4Linux]

Your Ubuntu is turning into windows!!
Don't worry, in my updates i see that there is one for a Windows NT remote client.

rdesktop is an open source client for Windows NT/2000 Terminal Server, capable of natively speaking its Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user's NT/2000 desktop. Unlike Citrix ICA, no server extensions are required.

Updates are thoroughly tested, so it is very unlikely that they cause any damage, as long as you use the official repositories.(Best way to screw your machine is enabling a lot of unofficial repositories at once and let them do whatever they want)

[NeoIce]

Ubuntu does automatic updates?

I personally dont like them and recommend against it. although they are tested, updates CAN break things, possibly catastrophically, and if the updates run automatically, you might not know what was update or even that an update had occured!

I'd turn it off just because I've seen a wide variety of machines break due to updates. examples:
DNS Server on Windows 2003 Server had a memory leak in one of its patches. brought our main name server to its knees. rolled back and updated later.
Debian installed a video driver that caused MAD artifacting on my MacBook. removing it fixed the problem.
OSX has to rebuild a bunch of core things and sometimes to reboot twice after a major point release. the rebuilds can take a few minutes and can be unnerving because you're never sure if its choking to death or working hard...

[L4Linux]

Ubuntu checks for updates and you can install them whenever you want. I usually install them a few days later, to be sure the updates did not cause any regressions.

[bigvoo]

thanks for replies, I'm really just trying to understand though, why a linux distro would want anything to do with windows nt r:login software, as I don't have any windows nt, and don't ever plan to access my linux box from an nt server, I just threw it away, but I think I'll start looking at updates closer from now on.

[Bemk]

Windows 2000 and higher are based on Windows NT (or Nice Try as I'd like to call it). Companies with Windows based servers have systems running in NT based platforms. Our system managers are RDP'ing(Don't even know if that's a real word but who cares, it is now) an awful lot to their servers, running on Win 2003 Server.
Their Linux fan's just like us and they want to put the whole Network on Linux, but they also want to keep using the RDP capabilities. So for them it could be handy to RDP to a Win NT based server.