# How to setup automatic updates for Ubuntu running Discourse? **URL:** \ **Category:** Self-hosting\ **Created:** [May 28, 2017, 12:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-setup-automatic-updates-for-ubuntu-running-discourse/63501 "2017-05-28T12:02:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![mpalmer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mpalmer/32/45740_2.png) [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2017, 12:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-setup-automatic-updates-for-ubuntu-running-discourse/63501/5 "2017-05-29T00:32:27Z")
The “message of the day” (“motd”), which is what indicates whether there are packages that need updating, or the system needs to be rebooted, or whatever, is dynamically generated on Ubuntu systems at login, via the `update-motd`(5) system, which is in turn invoked by `pam_motd.so` during login (unless otherwise modified by the system admin). The specific program which detects if updates are required and writes the appropriate verbiage is `/usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-updates-available`, which is a vaguely readable shell script that, once you chew through the boilerplate, calls `/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check --human-readable`, which you yourself can call at any time (even as a non-root user) to tell you what’s what. The information may be a little out of date, because the apt package lists only get refreshed once a day (via `/etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common`, which calls `/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader`), but within 24 hours of a security update becoming available you should see it reported in that `apt-check` call (you can also run `sudo apt-get update` yourself, which will update the package lists immediately). And yes, this isn’t a Linux forum. 😀 --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-setup-automatic-updates-for-ubuntu-running-discourse/63501)._