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Zypper Update Notifications - Monitor openSUSE & SLES Updates

Zypper Update Notifications - Monitor openSUSE & SLES Updates

Update-Watcher’s Zypper checker monitors openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for available package updates and security patches. It refreshes repositories, lists available updates, and optionally filters for security-only patches.

The setup wizard auto-detects Zypper and offers to enable this checker on openSUSE and SLES systems.

Prerequisites

  • An openSUSE, SLES, or Zypper-based system.
  • Sudo access for the user running Update-Watcher (unless use_sudo is disabled).

Adding via CLI

Add a Zypper watcher:

Terminal
update-watcher watch zypper

Enable security-only filtering:

Terminal
update-watcher watch zypper --security-only

Disable sudo:

Terminal
update-watcher watch zypper --no-sudo

Combine flags:

Terminal
update-watcher watch zypper --security-only --no-sudo

Configuration Reference

OptionTypeDefaultDescription
use_sudobooltrueRun Zypper commands with sudo. Disable if running as root.
security_onlyboolfalseOnly report security patches. Regular updates are silently filtered out.

YAML Configuration Example

Basic Zypper configuration:

config.yaml
watchers:
  - type: zypper

Full configuration with all options:

config.yaml
watchers:
  - type: zypper
    use_sudo: true
    security_only: false

Security-only monitoring for a production SLES server:

config.yaml
watchers:
  - type: zypper
    security_only: true

How It Works

The Zypper checker performs three operations:

Step 1: Refresh repositories

Runs zypper refresh to download the latest package metadata from all configured repositories.

Step 2: List available updates

Runs zypper list-updates to enumerate all packages with newer versions available.

Step 3: Identify security patches

Runs zypper list-patches --category security to identify which available patches are classified as security updates. When security_only is enabled, only these patches are reported.

The checker reports each available update with the package name, current version, and available version. Security patches are flagged separately.

Tips

💡

openSUSE Tumbleweed: openSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling release distribution. Like Arch Linux, it may report a large number of updates if the system has not been updated recently. Daily cron scheduling keeps you informed of accumulated updates.

openSUSE Leap and SLES: openSUSE Leap and SLES use a traditional release model with well-defined security advisories. Security-only filtering is especially useful on these platforms for production servers where you want to prioritize security patches.

Repository Refresh: The zypper refresh step may take a few seconds depending on the number of configured repositories and network speed. This is the same operation you would run manually before checking for updates.

Related

Send Zypper update notifications to Slack, Discord, Email, Teams, or any of the other 16 supported notification channels.

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