porticron

Author:	Benedikt Böhm
Version:	0.7.1
Web:	http://github.com/gentoo/porticron
Git:	git clone https://github.com/gentoo/porticron.git
Download:	http://github.com/gentoo/porticron/downloads

porticron is a simple shell script for portage similar to apticron for debian. It is called from cron to sync your portage tree and send any pending upgrade via email. Additionally it checks for security issues reported by glsa-check.

Installation

porticron is available via portage:

emerge porticron

Usage

Since version 0.5 porticron supports various command line arguments to change operating modes:

Usage: porticron [-hvVn] [-c <file>]

  -h         print this help text
  -v         enable verbose output
  -V         print version number
  -n         do not send upgrade mails
  -c <file>  use configuration in <file>

Configuration

The configuration for porticron is located at /etc/porticron.conf. You can set the following options:

SYNC_CMD

The command porticron should use to synchronize your portage tree. Defaults to /usr/bin/emerge --sync. Set this to /bin/true if your portage tree is mounted read-only (e.g. via nfs).

SYNC_OVERLAYS_CMD

The command porticron should use to synchronize your overlays. Defaults to /bin/true. Set this to /usr/bin/layman --sync-all to use layman for overlay synchronization.

UPGRADE_OPTS

Command-line options that should be passed to emerge while scanning for pending upgrades. Defaults to --deep --update.

RCPT

Recipient of notification mails. Defaults to root@$(hostname -f)

SENDMAIL

Path to sendmail binary. Defaults to /usr/sbin/sendmail

Example

A sample of an upgrade notification looks like this:

porticron report [Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:07:06 +0100]
========================================================================

porticron has detected that some packages need upgrading:

    [ebuild     U ] sys-libs/timezone-data-2008i [2008g-r1]
    [ebuild     U ] sys-apps/man-pages-3.14 [3.12]
    [ebuild     U ] sys-process/htop-0.8.1-r1 [0.8.1]
    [ebuild     U ] sys-apps/util-linux-2.14.1 [2.13.1.1]
    [ebuild     U ] app-portage/elogv-0.7.2 [0.7.1]
    [ebuild     U ] sys-apps/busybox-1.11.3 [1.11.1]
    [ebuild     U ] app-admin/eselect-1.0.11-r1 [1.0.10]

========================================================================

You can perform the upgrade by issuing the command:

    emerge --deep --update world

as root on foo.example.com

It is recommended that you pretend the upgrade first to confirm that
the actions that would be taken are reasonable. The upgrade may be
pretended by issuing the command:

    emerge --deep --update --pretend world