PAININTHEAPT(8)

🎀 Pain in the APT(8) 🎀

aka painintheapt — the little pest from the System Manager's Manual who will not let you forget that you have package upgrades pending 💅

okay so bestie, Pain in the APT pesters people about available package upgrades, just like apticron or cron-apt do. BUT — and this is the iconic part — it does it over XMPP (direct, MUC/conference room, or pubsub node), over SMTP, or by calling mailx. it's giving "your updater has main character energy" ✨

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🌸 What does it do?

1. updates the APT cache and checks for updates
2. sends list of available updates to Jabber contacts or a conference room or pubsub node immediately
3. or sends list of available updates and relevant changelogs (slow) to email recipients
4. downloads packages, but does not install them

Messages are only sent when there is any change in either the list of updates or in the configuration of painintheapt. so like, no spam, only ✨news✨

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💖 Options

• -c, --configfile configuration file — the configuration file, (defaults: /etc/painintheapt.conf)
• -d, --debug — print debug output to stderr
• -f, --force — send message, even if updates did not change
• -h, --help — print help
• -s, --stampfile stamp file — the stamp file (default: /var/lib/painintheapt/stamp)
• -t, --testmessage — send a test message only
• -v, --version — print version

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🦋 Configuration

The default configuration file is /etc/painintheapt.conf in inifile format. periodt.

There are up to three sections, XPMP, SMTP, and MAILX. (yes bestie, that first one is the XMPP section — typos happen, we still love it 🙈)

🧚 XMPP

The keys for XMPP are jid, password_file, avatar, to, room, pubsub_service, pubsub_node, send_changes, host, and port. The latter two are only necessary in exceptional cases. lowkey you can ignore them unless you're built different.

The most simple setup only needs jid, password_file, and to. that's it, that's the whole vibe check 💜

It is recommended to set the accompanying logo as Jabber avatar for the respective JID. This can be done automatically by painintheapt. bestie the cow gets to be your face, iconic

💌 SMTP

The keys for SMTP are server, port, username, password_file, from, to, cc, and send_changes.

📬 MAILX

The keys for MAILX are from, to, cc, and send_changes.

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⭐ Usage

painintheapt is typically run from systemd timers. One may call painintheapt without arguments daily, and with the --force option weekly, just to make sure that everything works fine. daily for the vibes, weekly for the safety net, fr fr

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🌈 Resources

• Homepage: https://salsa.debian.org/debacle/painintheapt

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👑 License

Affero General Public License 3 or higher

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🐄 Logo

        (___)
       ○(@ @)○
        -\∞/-
       /__‾__\

Maybe a cow, a gnu, or a dragon? ngl we do not know and we are obsessed with the mystery 🫶

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💅 Author

Martin <debacle@debian.org>

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and that's the whole page bestie — brought to you by the System Manager's Manual, filed under Pain in the APT(8), no cap 💖✨🎀🦋