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:
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.
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.
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.
TARGET…]¶Clean up old versions of the specified targets. If no targets are specified, all available targets will be vacuumed.
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.
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.
-h, --help¶--version¶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.
--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).
--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.
-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.
$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 to use when --no-pager is not given; overrides
      $PAGER. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a
      set of well-known pager implementations are tried in turn, including
      less(1) and
      more(1), until one is found. If
      no pager implementation is discovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string
      or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager.
Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER
      (as well as $PAGER) will be silently 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¶Takes a boolean argument. When true, the "secure" mode of the pager is enabled; if
      false, disabled. If $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set at all, 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).
      In secure mode, LESSSECURE=1 will be set when invoking the pager, and the pager shall
      disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. When
      $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set at all, pagers which are not known to implement
      secure mode will not be used. (Currently only
      less(1)
      implements secure mode.)
Note: when commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or
      pkexec(1), care
      must be taken to ensure that unintended interactive features are not enabled. "Secure" mode for the
      pager may be enabled automatically as describe above. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0
      or not removing it from the inherited environment allows the user to invoke arbitrary commands. Note
      that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER variables are to be
      honoured, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too. It might be reasonable to completely
      disable the pager using --no-pager instead.
$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