Ubuntu notes

what security updates do I need?

Report which packages need security updates:

apt-get update
apt-get --dry-run upgrade | grep "^Inst" | grep "-security"

unknown group in statusoverride file

Sometimes you get an error like this when using a package manager:

dpkg: syntax error: unknown group `Debian-exim' in statusoverride file 
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

This is due to a faulty package removal. The package maintainer may have forgotten to remove the override when uninstalling a package. Usually it is safe to fix this by manually running something like the following:

dpkg-statoverride --remove /etc/exim4/passwd.client