UPDATECTL(1)

NAME
updatectl - Control the system update service

SYNOPSIS

updatectl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND} [TARGET...]

DESCRIPTION

updatectl may be used to check for and install system updates managed by systemd-sysupdated.service(8).

COMMANDS

The following commands are understood:

list [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.

    Added in version 257.

check [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.

    Added in version 257.

update [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.

    Added in version 257.

vacuum [TARGET...]
    Clean up old versions of the specified targets. If no targets are specified, all available targets will be vacuumed.

    Added in version 257.

features [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.

    Added in version 257.

enable 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.

    Added in version 257.

--no-ask-password
    Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.

-h, --help
    Print a short help text and exit.

--version
    Print a short version string and exit.

OPTIONS

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.

    Added in version 257.

--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).

    Added in version 257.

--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.

    Added in version 257.

-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.

EXIT STATUS

On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

ENVIRONMENT

$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
    Pager to use when --no-pager is not given. $SYSTEMD_PAGER is used if set; otherwise $PAGER is used. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager implementations is tried in turn, including less(1) and more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation is discovered, no pager is invoked. Setting those environment variables to an empty string or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager.

    Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER and $PAGER can only be used to disable the pager (with "cat" or ""), and are otherwise 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
    Common pager commands like less(1), in addition to "paging", i.e. scrolling through the output, support opening of or writing to other files and running arbitrary shell commands. When commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or pkexec(1), the pager becomes a security boundary. Care must be taken that only programs with strictly limited functionality are used as pagers, and unintended interactive features like opening or creation of new files or starting of subprocesses are not allowed. "Secure mode" for the pager may be enabled as described below, if the pager supports that (most pagers are not written in a way that takes this into consideration). It is recommended to either explicitly enable "secure mode" or to completely disable the pager using --no-pager or PAGER=cat when allowing untrusted users to execute commands with elevated privileges.

    This option takes a boolean argument. When set to true, the "secure mode" of the pager is enabled. In "secure mode", LESSSECURE=1 will be set when invoking the pager, which instructs the pager to disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. Currently only less(1) is known to understand this variable and implement "secure mode".

    When set to false, no limitation is placed on the pager. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0 or not removing it from the inherited environment may allow the user to invoke arbitrary commands.

    When $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, systemd tools attempt to automatically figure out if "secure mode" should be enabled and whether the pager supports it. "Secure mode" is enabled if the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see geteuid(2) and sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3), or when running under sudo(8) or similar tools ($SUDO_UID is set [1]). In those cases, SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=1 will be set and pagers which are not known to implement "secure mode" will not be used at all. Note that this autodetection only covers the most common mechanisms to elevate privileges and is intended as convenience. It is recommended to explicitly set $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE or disable the pager.

    Note that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER variables are to be honoured, other than to disable the pager, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too.

$SYSTEMD_COLORS
    Takes a boolean argument, or a special value. By default (unset), systemd and related utilities will use colors in their output if possible. If $COLORTERM is set to "truecolor" or "24bit", 24-bit colors will be enabled, 256 colors otherwise, unless $NO_COLOR or $TERM indicates colors are disabled.

    true
        Same as unset, except that $NO_COLOR is ignored.

    false
        The output will be monochrome.

    "16", "256", "24bit"
        Always use the base 16 ANSI colors, 256 colors, or 24 bit color, respectively.

    "auto-16", "auto-256", "auto-24bit"
        Use the given quantity of colours, subject to $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.

EXAMPLES

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

SEE ALSO

systemd(1), systemd-sysupdate(8) systemd-sysupdated.service(8) sysupdate.d(5),

NOTES

1.  It is recommended for other tools to set and check $SUDO_UID as appropriate, treating it is a common interface.