Does `dnf-automatic` need to be "manually" enabled?

Ask Fedora
1

I have dnf install dnf-automatic and sudoedited /etc/dnf/automatic.conf to yes on {download,apply}_updates.

Is the above sufficient or do I need to run sudo systemctl enable --now dnf-automatic-install.timer? I don’t know if simply installing dnf-automatic already enabled the systemd unit/service.

I know running the command doesn’t hurt anyways, just curious.

Related discussion: Installed & enabled dnf-automatic. How often will this run, where can I find/edit this?

3

After you install dnf5-plugin-automatic, running

systemctl status dnf5-automatic.timer

shows that it defaults to “disabled”. So it’s “yes” you do need to run the timer enable:

sudo systemctl --now enable dnf5-automatic.timer

In general you want to use the “status” command to see if you need “enable”

4

Thank you for providing a way to check!

Though I think for now I might want to only automatically download. Which GNOME Software should be able to do that already.

$ systemctl status dnf-automatic.timer
○ dnf-automatic.timer - dnf-automatic timer
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/dnf-automatic.timer; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
    Trigger: n/a
   Triggers: ● dnf-automatic.service
5

dnf automatic can be configured to download-only as well, see:

man dnf5-automatic

The /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf is empty (missing) in the ‘dnf5-plugin-automatic’ package but you can look in /usr/share/dnf5/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf as a template, find the particular settings you want to override and put just them in /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf
For example to only change the “apply_updates”:

[commands]
apply_updates = no
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