The front page of cloudron.io hsa this:

FYI: that guy has not responded to this topic since September last year

This is unfortunate. I purchased a deal from SSD nodes for 3 years and was hoping to get away from monthly fees. I was using cloudron to test spin some things. I guess I'll have to start over and install them myself. Though that's for the best so that I can gather a fundamental understanding. Amazing product! Unfortunately just not for my (lack of a) budget at the moment.
Time to learn docker!

The front page of cloudron.io hsa this:

We publish latest releases within days and security fixes within 24h for apps and the server via the Cloudron App Store. This makes maintenance of your private cloud hassle-free and cost effective.

What is it that you think Cloudron is and does? What other service have you used, like Cloudron, where the user is expected to keep things up to date? Heck, not even Yunohost expects that, nor Caprover. You install Cloudron on a fresh server, and it manages everything for you. That's the point. You don't need to go learn Docker. THAT is why Cloudron exists, so users don't (well, it is useful to know something, for example a few rare times I've had to SSH into the server and then go into a container to tweak something, but oh so rare since even in those use-cases Cloudron's Dashboard allows the user to work inside the images). And your point about uninstalling... why in the world would you not reprovision a server if you are changing its purpose? Cloudron doesn't need to do uninstall itself when you don't want it. You just start over, setup the server again, as is normal practice.
I think you are walking away from exactly the product you want, if you give up on Cloudron now.

Checking for updates within Cloudron has nothing whatsoever to do with Ubuntu updates, it is ONLY to do with updates to Cloudron itself and/ or updates to the apps you've installed within Cloudron.

wrt Ubuntu updates, as the message says security updates to Ubuntu are automatically applied by Cloudron every night but other updates may not be applied because they may not be compatible with/ tested with Cloudron. At least that is my understanding.

Is that correct @Staff?

But, in short, as @scooke has said, you don't really ever need to ssh into your server with Cloudron (and you should never run the Ubuntu update you see there on the very odd occasion you might need to login to the server - I've maybe done so around 5 times in the last 2 years - because if you do you may well break things), just sit back and enjoy how easy things are with Cloudron.

PS as and aside, I could be wrong, but it looks like perhaps you're logging into your server using a password instead of just using ssh. I'd recommend disabling logging in with a password to improve security.

and going into cloudron and telling it to check for updates still tells me no updates found. [under settings/updates]

I've got a few other VPS (ethernet, racknerd, servarica, one of those KS-1s...) though just to keep my cli skills functioning.

regular updates are just ingrained in me when I login.

so you can enjoy being free from this routine burden with Cloudron ! I hardly ever login into Cloudron VPS. I use a mounted drive or Forklift SSH file access if I need to reach a directory.

FYI my Cloudron instance is on SSDNODES 3 year deal. It's my stable 'production' environment, and the annual Cloudron fee (much more sensible than monthly) is an easily justified time-saver.
And I have another SSDNODES on similar for "playing" with non-cloudron docker apps.

EDIT : for the sake of accuracy, I no longer SSDNODES for production unless low volume. My Cloudron is now on Hetzner ... although they are raising prices, may have to review the market

@cryptoanarchyt As I understand it, cloudron takes care of all OS updates, hence the warning.

If you're wanting to upgrade apps, then again Cloudron will do this automatically. Except for custom-packaged apps.

What packages on the OS or what apps are you thinking you need or want to update ?

Nothing in particular I am just a novice and regular updates are just ingrained in me when I login. (maybe from my arch days)

@nebulon said in How do I safely upgrade/update?:

@cryptoanarchyt we show this message since installing/updating packages via apt manually will eventually break your Cloudron installation as we have seen in the past.

Security updates will be applied automatically though, everything else is updated with Cloudron releases. The apps as such can be updated by Cloudron independently also, apt has no idea about those.

Further there is no real "uninstallation" of Cloudron since it will essentially take over the whole system and because re-installation of Ubuntu or simply booting a new virtual image is so convenient nowadays, we are not aiming to provide any clean uninstallation process.

This is unfortunate. I purchased a deal from SSD nodes for 3 years and was hoping to get away from monthly fees. I was using cloudron to test spin some things. I guess I'll have to start over and install them myself. Though that's for the best so that I can gather a fundamental understanding. Amazing product! Unfortunately just not for my (lack of a) budget at the moment.

Time to learn docker!

Security updates will be applied automatically though, everything else is updated with Cloudron releases. The apps as such can be updated by Cloudron independently also, apt has no idea about those.

Further there is no real "uninstallation" of Cloudron since it will essentially take over the whole system and because re-installation of Ubuntu or simply booting a new virtual image is so convenient nowadays, we are not aiming to provide any clean uninstallation process.

If you're wanting to upgrade apps, then again Cloudron will do this automatically. Except for custom-packaged apps.

What packages on the OS or what apps are you thinking you need or want to update ?