this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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I've been using unattended upgrades without any problems until now. However, for the second time, I'm encountering an issue where I end up with a summary stating that some packages were not installed or updated. Among other things, it tells me:

Package imagemagick is held back because a related package is held back or due to local apt_preferences(5).

However, when I run sudo apt full-upgrade, everything is up to date and the packages are installed. sudo apt-mark showhold also doesn’t list any packages. So why am I getting the message that packages were held back?

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[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

By default, unattended-upgrades installs only security updates. To change it to install 'normal' updates, you need to enable these, as explained e.g. in the Debian wiki

[–] MoLoPoLY@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That's not my problem. I've customized the pattern so that all updates are installed, as long as they don't introduce new configurations—even for “regular” software. That works without any issues. The same goes for third-party repositories like ntfy or docker.

What I don't understand is the log file entry indicating that packages are being held back, even though they end up being installed anyway. I'd at least like to understand why.

[–] MoLoPoLY@feddit.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

Many thx for the hint with these both log files. I have checked them, but i couldn't found other processes installing the mentioned packages. There are only 2 manually invoked apt commands, to manually downgrade and later update wget, but that was a test from my own. I personally think that unattended-upgrades has complained about the kept packages, but lastly installed them.

Im using a 52unattended-upgrades-local file to overwrite the standard file with the following settings:

Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern {
        "origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-updates";
//      "origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-proposed-updates";
        "origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian";
        "origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian-Security";
        "origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-security,label=Debian-Security";
        "origin=Raspbian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Raspbian";
        "origin=Raspberry Pi Foundation,codename=${distro_codename},label=Raspberry Pi Foundation";
        "site=archive.ntfy.sh";
        "site=download.docker.com,a=trixie";
};

Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist {
};

Unattended-Upgrade::AutoFixInterruptedDpkg "true";

Unattended-Upgrade::MinimalSteps "false";

Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Kernel-Packages "true";

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

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

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true";

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-WithUsers "true";

Unattended-Upgrade::SyslogEnable "false";

Maybe i have something missconfigured...