How dangerous is automatic updating of a linux server?

Question

linux

In all recommendations they write that automatic updating of linux servers is not welcome.
The main reason, they say, is that if something goes wrong, you can immediately fix it.
What are the real options for a problematic update? Has anyone had problems with updates at all? And how did you fix them?
I have been manually updating a virtual server on Debian for more than a year, I have never had any problems.
There is a suggestion to add apt-get update apt-get upgrade to the cron.
Therefore, how risky is it to automatically update the server?

Answer 1

And it's not for nothing that they recommend it.
There will be a major update to php/nginx/apache or any other vital production component and there is not a small chance that the services will fall.
Along with the updates, patches for the kernel + headers and dependencies come, but the important point is that the dependencies are updated at the same minute, and the new kernel will only be loaded with a reboot, this will cause inevitable conflicts if you don’t reboot (and you can’t do it very often ).
In general, from experience - any updates are unpredictable, you can get into an awkward situation even updating some harmless things like logrotate.

Answer 2

You don't need to add anything to cron, there is cron-apt.
security can be rolled automatically, the rest is optional and tasks.