How do you check systemd update content?

Question

I am thinking of updating an Ubuntu server, and was wondering whether to update systemd or not. However, I am not certain how to inspect the contents of the systemd update. The output of apt list --upgradable shows:

systemd/xenial-updates 229-4ubuntu19 amd64 [upgradable from: 229-4ubuntu17]
systemd-sysv/xenial-updates 229-4ubuntu19 amd64 [upgradable from: 229-4ubuntu17]

How do I inspect the contents of these updates to make sure I'm ok with what they are doing to my system?

Apologies if this is a basic question for the advanced Ubuntines here.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 08 '17 at 13:10

As soon as Major (here it is 229) and Minor (here it is 4) version numbers does not change, you can install update without thinking about the bug. Maintenance version number (here it is 19) only includes bug fixes.

Also, I suppose that, what you are looking for is Changelog. It will show you what changes are applied in different versions. The output of apt changelog systemd:

systemd (229-4ubuntu19) xenial; urgency=medium

  * debian/extra/units/systemd-resolved.service.d/resolvconf.conf: partially
    revert, by removing ExecStart|StopPost lines, as these are not needed on
    xenial and generate warnings in the journal. (LP: #1704677)

 -- Dimitri John Ledkov <xnox@ubuntu.com>  Mon, 17 Jul 2017 17:00:42 +0100

systemd (229-4ubuntu18) xenial; urgency=medium

  * debian/extra/units/systemd-resolved.service.d/resolvconf.conf: if resolved
    is going to be started, make sure this blocks network-online.target.
    (LP: #1673860)
  * networkd: cherry-pick support for setting bridge port's priority
    (LP: #1668347)
  * Cherrypick upstream commit to enable system use kernel maximum limit for
    RLIMIT_NOFILE isntead of hard-coded (low) limit of 65536. (LP: #1686361)
  * Cherrypick upstream patch for platform predictable interface names.
    (LP: #1686784)
  * resolved: fix null pointer dereference crash (LP: #1621396)
  * Cherrypick core/timer downgrade message about random time addition
    (LP: #1692136)
  * SECURITY UPDATE: Out-of-bounds write in systemd-resolved (LP: #1695546)
    - CVE-2017-9445
  * Cherry-pick subset of patches to introduce infinity value in logind.conf
    for UserTasksMax (LP: #1651518)

 -- Dimitri John Ledkov <xnox@ubuntu.com>  Wed, 05 Jul 2017 13:45:48 +0100

How do you check systemd update content?

1 Answers1