A lot of my server software is installed via apt-get and I was wondering if there is a small shell script I can get which will will update all of this software. Also do I need to restart my server afterwards or stop the scripts from running before I run this update?
Is it really as simple as:
apt-get update?
No, apt-get update downloads the package lists from the repositories and "updates" them to get information on the newest versions of packages. You then also need to execute apt-get upgrade to actually install updates.
No, restarting the whole sytem would only be necessary if you had upgraded the kernel itself. This would require a reboot in most cases. Everything else, including the stopping and restarting of services, should be handled by the package system.
BTW: You should take a look at cron-apt - this tool downloads upgraded packages at night, which then can be installed manuall with apt-get update.
