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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | ENVIRONMENT | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON |
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UPDATECTL(1) updatectl UPDATECTL(1)
updatectl - Control the system update service
updatectl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND} [TARGET...]
updatectl may be used to check for and install system updates
managed by systemd-sysupdated.service(8).
The following commands are understood:
list [TARGET[@VERSION]]
Show information about targets and their versions.
When no TARGET is specified, this command lists all available
targets. When a TARGET is specified without a VERSION, this
command lists all known versions of the specified target. If a
VERSION is specified, this command lists all known information
about the specific version.
See the example below for details of the output.
Added in version 257.
check [TARGET...]
Check if any updates are available for the specified targets.
If no targets are specified, all available targets will be
checked for updates.
See the example below for details of the output.
Added in version 257.
update [TARGET[@VERSION]...]
Update the specified targets to the specified versions. If a
target is specified without a version, then it will be updated
to the latest version. If no targets are specified, then all
available targets will be updated to the latest version.
Added in version 257.
vacuum [TARGET...]
Clean up old versions of the specified targets. If no targets
are specified, all available targets will be vacuumed.
Added in version 257.
features [FEATURE]
When no FEATURE is specified, this command lists all optional
features. When a FEATURE is specified, this command lists all
known information about that feature.
Added in version 257.
enable FEATURE..., disable FEATURE...
These commands enable or disable optional features. See
sysupdate.features(5). These commands always operate on the
host system.
By default, these commands will only change the system's
configuration by creating or deleting drop-in files; they will
not immediately download the enabled features, or clean up
after the disabled ones. Enabled features will be downloaded
and installed the next time the target is updated, and
disabled transfers will be cleaned up the next time the target
is updated or vacuumed. Pass --now to immediately apply these
changes.
Added in version 257.
-h, --help
Print a short help text and exit.
--version
Print a short version string and exit.
The following commands are understood:
--reboot
When used with the update command, reboots the system after
updates finish applying. If any update fails, the system will
not reboot.
When used with the enable or disable commands and the --now
flag, reboots the system after download or clean-up finish
applying.
Added in version 257.
--offline
When used with the list command, disables fetching metadata
from the network. This makes the list command only return
information that is available locally (i.e. about versions
already installed on the system).
Added in version 257.
--now
When used with the enable command, downloads and installs the
enabled features. When used with the disable command, deletes
all resources downloaded by the disabled features.
Added in version 257.
-H, --host=
Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a
username and hostname separated by "@", to connect to. The
hostname may optionally be suffixed by a port ssh is listening
on, separated by ":", and then a container name, separated by
"/", which connects directly to a specific container on the
specified host. This will use SSH to talk to the remote
machine manager instance. Container names may be enumerated
with machinectl -H HOST. Put IPv6 addresses in brackets.
--no-pager
Do not pipe output into a pager.
--no-legend
Do not print the legend, i.e. column headers and the footer
with hints.
On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL
The maximum log level of emitted messages (messages with a
higher log level, i.e. less important ones, will be
suppressed). Takes a comma-separated list of values. A value
may be either one of (in order of decreasing importance)
emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, debug, or an
integer in the range 0...7. See syslog(3) for more
information. Each value may optionally be prefixed with one of
console, syslog, kmsg or journal followed by a colon to set
the maximum log level for that specific log target (e.g.
SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug,console:info specifies to log at debug
level except when logging to the console which should be at
info level). Note that the global maximum log level takes
priority over any per target maximum log levels.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_COLOR
A boolean. If true, messages written to the tty will be
colored according to priority.
This setting is only useful when messages are written directly
to the terminal, because journalctl(1) and other tools that
display logs will color messages based on the log level on
their own.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_TIME
A boolean. If true, console log messages will be prefixed with
a timestamp.
This setting is only useful when messages are written directly
to the terminal or a file, because journalctl(1) and other
tools that display logs will attach timestamps based on the
entry metadata on their own.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_LOCATION
A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with a filename
and line number in the source code where the message
originates.
Note that the log location is often attached as metadata to
journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message
text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_TID
A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with the current
numerical thread ID (TID).
Note that the this information is attached as metadata to
journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message
text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.
$SYSTEMD_LOG_TARGET
The destination for log messages. One of console (log to the
attached tty), console-prefixed (log to the attached tty but
with prefixes encoding the log level and "facility", see
syslog(3), kmsg (log to the kernel circular log buffer),
journal (log to the journal), journal-or-kmsg (log to the
journal if available, and to kmsg otherwise), auto (determine
the appropriate log target automatically, the default), null
(disable log output).
$SYSTEMD_LOG_RATELIMIT_KMSG
Whether to ratelimit kmsg or not. Takes a boolean. Defaults to
"true". If disabled, systemd will not ratelimit messages
written to kmsg.
$SYSTEMD_PAGER, $PAGER
Pager to use when --no-pager is not given. $SYSTEMD_PAGER is
used if set; otherwise $PAGER is used. If neither
$SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager
implementations is tried in turn, including less(1) and
more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation is
discovered, no pager is invoked. Setting those environment
variables to an empty string or the value "cat" is equivalent
to passing --no-pager.
Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER and
$PAGER can only be used to disable the pager (with "cat" or
""), and are otherwise ignored.
$SYSTEMD_LESS
Override the options passed to less (by default "FRSXMK").
Users might want to change two options in particular:
K
This option instructs the pager to exit immediately when
Ctrl+C is pressed. To allow less to handle Ctrl+C itself
to switch back to the pager command prompt, unset this
option.
If the value of $SYSTEMD_LESS does not include "K", and
the pager that is invoked is less, Ctrl+C will be ignored
by the executable, and needs to be handled by the pager.
X
This option instructs the pager to not send termcap
initialization and deinitialization strings to the
terminal. It is set by default to allow command output to
remain visible in the terminal even after the pager exits.
Nevertheless, this prevents some pager functionality from
working, in particular paged output cannot be scrolled
with the mouse.
Note that setting the regular $LESS environment variable has
no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.
See less(1) for more discussion.
$SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET
Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8", if
the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible).
Note that setting the regular $LESSCHARSET environment
variable has no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
Common pager commands like less(1), in addition to "paging",
i.e. scrolling through the output, support opening of or
writing to other files and running arbitrary shell commands.
When commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for
example under sudo(8) or pkexec(1), the pager becomes a
security boundary. Care must be taken that only programs with
strictly limited functionality are used as pagers, and
unintended interactive features like opening or creation of
new files or starting of subprocesses are not allowed. "Secure
mode" for the pager may be enabled as described below, if the
pager supports that (most pagers are not written in a way that
takes this into consideration). It is recommended to either
explicitly enable "secure mode" or to completely disable the
pager using --no-pager or PAGER=cat when allowing untrusted
users to execute commands with elevated privileges.
This option takes a boolean argument. When set to true, the
"secure mode" of the pager is enabled. In "secure mode",
LESSSECURE=1 will be set when invoking the pager, which
instructs the pager to disable commands that open or create
new files or start new subprocesses. Currently only less(1) is
known to understand this variable and implement "secure mode".
When set to false, no limitation is placed on the pager.
Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0 or not removing it from the
inherited environment may allow the user to invoke arbitrary
commands.
When $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, systemd tools attempt to
automatically figure out if "secure mode" should be enabled
and whether the pager supports it. "Secure mode" is enabled if
the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login
session, see geteuid(2) and sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3), or when
running under sudo(8) or similar tools ($SUDO_UID is set [1]).
In those cases, SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=1 will be set and pagers
which are not known to implement "secure mode" will not be
used at all. Note that this autodetection only covers the most
common mechanisms to elevate privileges and is intended as
convenience. It is recommended to explicitly set
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE or disable the pager.
Note that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER variables are to be
honoured, other than to disable the pager,
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too.
$SYSTEMD_COLORS
Takes a boolean argument. When true, systemd and related
utilities will use colors in their output, otherwise the
output will be monochrome. Additionally, the variable can take
one of the following special values: "16", "256" to restrict
the use of colors to the base 16 or 256 ANSI colors,
respectively. This can be specified to override the automatic
decision based on $TERM and what the console is connected to.
$SYSTEMD_URLIFY
The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links
should be generated in the output for terminal emulators
supporting this. This can be specified to override the
decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other
conditions.
Note that these examples are just here for demonstration purposes,
and the output of these commands is free to change. These commands
are intended for display to a user. If you'd like machine-readable
output, use the org.freedesktop.sysupdate1(5) D-Bus API directly.
Example 1. Output from list
$ updatectl list
TARGET VERSION PATH
host 48 sysupdate.d
machine:fedora 38 /var/lib/machines/fedora.raw
component:shim 15.7 sysupdate.shim.d
$ updatectl list host
VERSION STATUS
↻ 50 candidate
49 available
● 48 current
47 available
46 available
45 available
[...]
× 25 available+obsolete
× 24 available+obsolete
× 23 available+obsolete
[...]
$ updatectl list host@49
↻ Version: 50
State: candidate
ChangeLog: https://vendor.com/os/v50.html
TYPE PATH PTUUID PTFLAGS SHA256
url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/uki_50 - - 90f6534282dd720f7a222fa781086990dc9c83e5c7499f085970a8e75e3ac349
url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/usr_50_981a5b84-a301-c819-f681-3e575fe16f16 981a5b84-a301-c819-f681-3e575fe16f16 - c0596ab1095258ec6f16c7c281a50d71c419a9f587c1ef858cfbbb69fb0a16f3
url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/verity_50_2f8d0f3b-f80a-6ddc-a556-3722bfbb5b79 2f8d0f3b-f80a-6ddc-a556-3722bfbb5b79 - e1e90a128e038b3a53455e55d1ca717c743aba31fe6b4b4624109df0243c6338
url-file http://dl.vendor.com/os/verity_sig_50 - - ca3d163bab055381827226140568f3bef7eaac187cebd76878e0b63e9e442356
Example 2. Checking for and installing updates
$ updatectl check
TARGET UPDATE
host 48 → 50
machine:fedora 38 → 40
$ updatectl update host machine:fedora@39
[...]
✓ host@50
✓ machine:fedora@39
systemd(1), systemd-sysupdate(8) systemd-sysupdated.service(8)
sysupdate.d(5),
1. It is recommended for other tools to set and check $SUDO_UID
as appropriate, treating it is a common interface.
This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
manager) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, see
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-11.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
systemd 258~rc2 UPDATECTL(1)
Pages that refer to this page: org.freedesktop.sysupdate1(5), systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7), systemd-sysupdated.service(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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