AUTER(1)

📦
version 1.0.0 · 3 versions
, in epel 10, fedora 43

💖 AUTER(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to AUTER(1) — the User Commands girlie of the manual world. Sit down, grab a strawberry, we're gonna learn about auter together 🍓✨

✨ NAME ✨

auter — Automatic Update Transaction Execution by Rackspace. no cap, that's the whole name. it's giving "we made the acronym fit, don't @ us" 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

auter [--enable|--disable|--status] [--prep] [--apply] [--reboot]
[--postreboot] [--config=<configfile>] [OPTIONS]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Automatic Update Transaction Execution by Rackspace. Basically it's a wrapper around cron and yum/dnf/apt</> that manages your system updates for you, and it's highkey extra about it — it can do automatic reboots and run your own custom scripts too. main character energy fr fr 👑

🎀 Actions:

  • --enable — turn auter ON. slay 💖
  • --disable — turn auter OFF. and also, it deletes the unused pidfile if one's just sitting there existing. bye bestie 👋
  • --status — shows you whether it's enabled or disabled. the vibe check, essentially ✨
  • --prep — pre-download those updates before applying them. look at you, being prepared 🌈
  • --apply — apply the updates, and reboot if AUTOREBOOT=yes. big moment 🔥
  • --reboot — reboot the system, pre/post reboot scripts included, obviously 🧚
  • --postreboot — run the post reboot script 🫶

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --config=FILE — tell it the full path to an auter config file. if you don't, it just defaults to /etc/auter/auter.conf 💜
  • --stdout — always log to STDOUT, even when there's no tty. no hiding bestie 📢
  • --maxdelay — override MAXDELAY straight from the command line. boss move 👑
  • --skip-all-scripts — skip running all the custom scripts (the default spot for those is /etc/auter/*.d/). not today 💀
  • --skip-scripts-by-phase=PHASE — skip the custom scripts for a specific phase. and yes, you can list multiple phases.
    • Valid Phases: pre-prep, post-prep, pre-apply, post-apply, pre-reboot, post-reboot.
    • Example: --skip-scripts-by-phase="pre-prep,post-apply,pre-reboot"
  • --skip-scripts-by-name=SCRIPTNAME — skip specific scripts by name. you can specify multiple phases.
    • Example: --skip-scripts-by-name="10-configsnap-pre, 20-startApp.sh"
  • --no-wall — if it's possible, suppress the shutdown wall messages during the reboot phase 🤫
  • -h, --help — show this help text. you are here 📍
  • -v, --version — show the version ⭐

🌈 DIRECTORIES 🌈

Default directory locations are listed down below; but you can set custom paths in the config file. and heads up — if you're running more than one auter profile, you gotta use additional, non-default config files. it's required, not optional 🫠

🧚 Pre/Post Hooks

If any scripts in the pre/post hook directories are not executable, auter will skip them and log a warning with the filename. and if any scripts in those directories exit with a non-zero exit code, auter logs an error with the filename and the exit code — and then auter aborts. like, full stop. 😭

  • /etc/auter/pre-prep.d — directory of scripts to run before downloading updates
  • /etc/auter/post-prep.d — directory of scripts to run after downloading updates
  • /etc/auter/pre-apply.d — directory of scripts to run before applying updates
  • /etc/auter/pre-apply.d — wait no bestie, we already said that. next one 👇
  • /etc/auter/post-apply.d — directory of scripts to run after applying updates
  • /etc/auter/pre-reboot.d — directory of scripts to run before rebooting
  • /etc/auter/post-reboot.d — directory of scripts to run after rebooting
    • and there's a hard coded delay of 5 minutes post-reboot so the system can get fully ready before the post-reboot scripts run. it's napping. let it nap 😴

🎀 Hook Execution Order

Files in the pre/post script directories get parsed in sorted lexical order. so like, /etc/auter/pre-apply.d/01_first gets parsed before /etc/auter/pre-apply.d/10_second. and here's the tea — because the sorting is lexical, not numeric, /etc/auter/pre-apply.d/1_whoops would load after /etc/pre-apply.d/10_second. yeah. whoops indeed 💀

using a consistent number of leading zeroes in your file names avoids this whole situation. for example, this is the execution order you'd get for pre-apply scripts:

pre-apply.d/00-first.sh
pre-apply.d/99-second.sh
pre-apply.d/AA-fourth.sh
pre-apply.d/aa-third.sh
pre-apply.d/zz-fifth.sh
pre-apply.d/ZZ-sixth.sh

and note that the ordering is case-insensitive, so AA-fourth.sh will be run before aa-third.sh. the alphabet said no favorites today ✨

👑 ENABLE/DISABLE 👑

So, to make switching all your auter jobs on/off easy, you use auter --enable or auter --disable — which sets the lockfile /var/lib/auter/enabled. auter checks whether that file is present before it runs anything. presence check, that's it, that's the whole system 🦋

This is also the correct method for cleaning up an unused pidfile. correct method only. no shortcuts 🫶

🔥 REBOOTING 🔥

Rebooting is an essential part of applying updates, because you need to make sure the updated packages are actually in use. An update to the kernel will always need a reboot, periodt.

Some application updates, like Apache for example, will restart the service. But often libraries get updated — openssl, for instance — and those don't force a reboot of the services using them. Rebooting guarantees every update is in use by running services. it's the only way to be sure 💅

So you've got two options:

  1. Enable AUTOREBOOT=yes in the config file (the default is AUTOREBOOT=no), to reboot after --apply.
  2. Schedule a separate schedule for --reboot via a second cronjob.

A 2 minute warning is emitted before the server reboots, and a superuser can cancel it with shutdown -c. last chance to change your mind 🙈

⭐ EXIT CODES ⭐

 0 = updates successful / no updates available
 3 = issue related to yum / dnf / apt-get command
 4 = auter disabled via lockfile
 5 = script not run as root / DATADIR does not exist / config file does
not exist
 6 = auter is already running / PIDFILE exists
 7 = yum, dnf or apt-get was not found
 8 = a pre/post hook exited with a non-zero error code

💜 AUTHORS 💜

This documentation was primarily written by, and we're giving them their flowers 💐:

Paolo Gigante
Piers Cornwell
Cameron Beere

🌸 FILES 🌸

  • /etc/auter/auter.conf — the default config file location. use the --config option to pass an alternative config file to use within /etc/auter.
  • /etc/cron.d/auter — the default cron file, with examples 🎀
  • /usr/bin/auter — the main auter script, which contains linux generic code
  • /usr/lib/auter/auter.module — the auter module for the relevant package manager
  • /usr/share/doc/auter-0.11/LICENSE — the Apache License
  • /usr/share/doc/auter-0.11/MAINTAINERS.md — a list of maintainers and mailing list
  • /usr/share/doc/auter-0.11/NEWS — the NEWS file and changelog for auter

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

Found a bug? please report it by raising an issue against the github page, or email us at:

https://github.com/rackerlabs/auter/issues
auter-devel@rackspace.com

we wanna hear it. respectfully 🫶

💖 SEE ALSO 💖

auter.conf(5), cron(8), crontab(5)

no cap: every flag, every path, every exit code, every author — all here. go forth and update responsibly bestie 💅✨

okay bye, this was auter 1.0.0 from July 2025 — she's iconic, she's from Rackspace, and she's got the whole AUTER(1) manual energy. mwah 💋🎀🦋

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