New Server Admin Question!

[zgjonbalaj]

Hello,

I am fairly new to linux in general. I have had experience with it for over two years now but i am still catching onto things. I recently set up a fully working ISPconfig3 which took quite a bit of learning on my end to get it to where it is. I feel confident in the server and of its security. I guess my question relates to good maintaining habits specifically those that involve package updates.

I am a bit trigger happy when it comes to updates be it for good or worse. I know alot of these packages include security updates & patches which are important. I also tend to want the latest version of a program and although sometimes that is not the preferred way to go. Is this generally ok with ISPconfig? I am running Ubuntu 11.10 x64 and after doing an apt-get upgrade these are the packages available to upgrade now:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apt apt-transport-https apt-utils gzip language-pack-en libapache2-mod-fcgid
  libapt-inst1.3 libapt-pkg4.11 libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc6 libc6-dev
  libfreetype6 libmysqlclient16 libpng12-0 linux-libc-dev multiarch-support
  mysql-client mysql-client-5.1 mysql-client-core-5.1 mysql-common
  mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server-core-5.1 python-pam tzdata
26 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 34.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 352 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Generally speaking will an upgrade of packages such as MySql and such hurt the system or should i not go with this? I feel as though i should read the changelog of each package but to be frank its time i dont have is that what others do?

Any suggestions appreciated. Thank You!

[till]

Installing these updates is ok and will not break the server. In generally it is safe to install the normal maintenance updates on ubuntu as they take care to not break existing systems. Where you should be more careful is when you switch to a new Ubuntu major version (dist upgrade) like from 11.10 to 12.04.

[zgjonbalaj]

Thank you for the reply really helpful!