UPDATECTL(1)

🦋 updatectl — the girl who runs your system updates 💅

okay so bestie, this is updatectl(1), and she's the one you call when you wanna check for and install system updates. let's get into it. ✨

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💖 NAME 💖

updatectl — control the system update service. that's it, that's the job, and she does it flawlessly. 👑

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📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

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

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so updatectl is the command you reach for when you wanna check for and install system updates — the ones managed by systemd-sysupdated.service(8). she's basically the group chat admin of your update service, keeping everything cute and current. 🫶

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🎀 COMMANDS 🎀

here's the tea, these are the commands she understands:

• list [TARGET[@VERSION]] — shows you the info about targets and their versions. lowkey the most useful one for snooping. 👀
  • no TARGET given? she lists all available targets. the whole roster, everyone's here.
  • a TARGET with no VERSION? she lists all known versions of that target.
  • a VERSION specified too? she lists all known information about that specific version.
  • check the example below for what the output actually looks like.
  • Added in version 257.
• check [TARGET...] — the vibe check, but for updates. ✨ checks whether any updates are available for the targets you name. name no targets and she checks all available targets for updates.
  • see the example below for details of the output.
  • Added in version 257.
• update [TARGET[@VERSION]...] — updates the targets you name to the versions you name. 🔥
  • TARGET with no version → she updates it to the latest version.
  • no targets at all → all available targets get updated to the latest version. she's doing the most, respectfully.
  • Added in version 257.
• vacuum [TARGET...] — cleans up old versions of the specified targets. spring cleaning energy 🧹✨. no targets given → all available targets get vacuumed.
  • Added in version 257.
• features [FEATURE] — no FEATURE? she lists all optional features. a FEATURE given? she lists all known information about that feature.
  • Added in version 257.
• enable FEATURE..., disable FEATURE... — these enable or disable optional features. see sysupdate.features(5). and note: these commands always operate on the host system. no sneaky remote business here.
  • by default these commands only change the system's configuration by creating or deleting drop-in files — they will not immediately download the enabled features, and they will not clean up after the disabled ones. ngl that's intentional.
  • enabled features get downloaded and installed the next time the target is updated. disabled transfers get cleaned up the next time the target is updated or vacuumed.
  • pass --now if you want those changes applied immediately. ⚡
  • Added in version 257.
• --no-ask-password — do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations. she's not gonna interrupt you, bestie. 🙈
• -h, --help — print a short help text and exit.
• --version — print a short version string and exit.

okay yes, those last three are options chilling in the COMMANDS list. the manpage said so, we don't argue with her, she's iconic. 💅

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

the original literally opens this section with "The following commands are understood:" — a lil typo moment, we love her anyway. here's what's actually in here:

• --reboot — when used with the update command, it reboots the system after the updates finish applying. 🌀 but if any update fails, the system will not reboot. no half-finished nonsense.
  • when used with the enable or disable commands and the --now flag, it reboots the system after the download or clean-up finish applying.
  • Added in version 257.
• --offline — when used with the list command, it disables fetching metadata from the network. so list only returns information that's available locally — i.e. about versions already installed on the system. airplane mode but make it intentional. ✈️
  • Added in version 257.
• --now — when used with the enable command, it downloads and installs the enabled features. when used with the disable command, it deletes all resources downloaded by the disabled features. instant gratification, she said. ⚡
  • 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 uses 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. the column headers and the footer with hints. clean lines only, we respect it. ✨

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💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

on success, 0 is returned. otherwise you get a non-zero failure code. no in-between, she's not ambiguous about her feelings.

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✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

okay so bestie, the tools read a whole lil family of environment variables and they change everything about how output looks and behaves. here's the full roster, no skips, no cap 💖

🌈 $SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL

The maximum log level of emitted messages — meaning anything with a higher log level (aka less important stuff) gets yeeted into the void and suppressed.

It takes a comma-separated list of values. Each value can be one of these, listed 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 info, fr.

Each value may optionally be prefixed with one of console, syslog, kmsg or journal followed by a colon, to set the max log level for that specific log target. Like, for example, SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug,console:info means log at debug level, except when logging to the console, which should be at info level. iconic.

⚠️ heads up: the global maximum log level takes priority over any per-target maximum log levels. periodt.

🌸 $SYSTEMD_LOG_COLOR

A boolean. If true, messages written to the tty get colored according to priority. cute right?

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 all on their own. they don't need help 💅

🦋 $SYSTEMD_LOG_TIME

A boolean. If true, console log messages get prefixed with a timestamp.

Again, only useful when messages go directly to the terminal or a file, because journalctl(1) and other log-displaying tools attach timestamps based on the entry metadata themselves. soz.

🎀 $SYSTEMD_LOG_LOCATION

A boolean. If true, messages get prefixed with a filename and line number pointing to where in the source code the message came from.

Note that the log location is often attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. but honestly, putting it directly in the message text is still super convenient when you're debugging programs. lowkey a lifesaver.

💜 $SYSTEMD_LOG_TID

A boolean. If true, messages get prefixed with the current numerical thread ID (TID).

Note that this information is attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. still, having it right there in the message text can be convenient when debugging programs. yk?

👑 $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. chaos mode, basically.

💖 $SYSTEMD_PAGER, $PAGER

The 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 at all, no pager is invoked.

Setting those environment variables to an empty string or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager. slay.

⚠️ 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. yes really.

✨ $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's 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. iykyk.

🔒 $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE

okay this one is the serious one, bestie, listen up.

Common pager commands like less(1), in addition to "paging" (i.e. scrolling through the output), support opening 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 that 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. fr fr, do not skip this.

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. sad beige energy.

"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 that support this. This can be specified to override the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other conditions. clickable. links. in your terminal. we love to see it. ✨

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💖 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. ok bestie, eyes on the screen 👀

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

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

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

go read those too, bestie, i promise they're worth it 🫶

📝 NOTES 📝

1. Bestie, if you're building other tools that need to play nice with this one, the recommendation is to set and check $SUDO_UID as appropriate — treat it as a common interface between everybody. 💖 Like, it's the shared language, the group chat everybody's already in, so use it and don't reinvent it. ✨

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🫶 That's the whole page, gorgeous — you made it all the way to the end, main character energy fr fr. 👑

This was updatectl(1) from systemd 262.1 💅 — go forth and update things responsibly, bestie. 🌸🦋