Update Station

GhostBSD update manager. It runs as root, checks for updates in the background, shows a tray icon when there is something to install, and installs it from a GTK interface.

Upgrade types

Update Station reads the GhostBSD version, which is shaped like 26.1-R15.0p13, and compares the running system against the repository to decide what kind of upgrade is available.

Upgrade	Example	How it is installed
Packages	newer packages, same version	In place, with an optional boot environment backup
Release	26.2-R15.1p2 to 26.3-R15.1p5	In a new boot environment
Minor	26.1-R15.0p13 to 26.2-R15.1p2	In a new boot environment, reinstalling every package
Major	26.1-R14.3p8 to 26.2-R15.0	In a new boot environment, reinstalling every package

An upgrade installed in a boot environment never touches the running system. It goes into a new boot environment which is activated for the next boot, so the upgrade takes effect when you restart. Until you do, Update Station stops looking for updates and asks for the restart instead. The boot environment it created is yours to keep or to remove with BE Station.

A major upgrade changes the FreeBSD ABI and asks before it starts. The others do not ask, they show the package list like any other update.

Running

# Tray icon, checks every hour
sudo update-station

# Check right away and open the window
sudo update-station check-now

When the tray is already running, check-now signals it instead of starting a second instance.

Building and installing

./setup.py build
sudo ./setup.py install

./setup.py clean removes the compiled translations and ./setup.py clean_build removes build, dist and the egg-info directory.

Requirements

PyGObject, requests, setuptools, bectl and distro, listed in requirements.txt, plus psutil. The process name is set through libc with ctypes, so no setproctitle module is needed.

Development

# Run the tests, no GTK needed
python -m unittest discover tests

# Lint
pylint update_station/

Managing Translations

To create a translation file.

./setup.py create_translation --locale=fr

To update translation files

./setup.py update_translations