Unattended-Upgrades – Does It Include apt-get autoremove?

aptcronpackage-managementunattended-upgradesupgrade

Say I recently installed unattended-upgrades via:

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades -y
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades -y

Does unattended-upgrades also include apt-get autoremove?

Or should I add a weekly cronjob atop the unattended-upgrades layer to make sure dependencies of deleted packages are removed as well, via crontab -e and then:

0 0 * * 0 apt-get autoremove -y

Note: Feel free to mention similar apt concepts besides autoremove if these are needed.

Best Answer

Whether or not unattended-upgrades will perform the cleanup (auto remove) is controlled by the Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies setting in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades. Set it as follows to enable the cleanup -- and you should be able to remove the explicit autoremove cron-job:

Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies  "true";
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