PSA: If you had dnf-automatic enabled and updated to Fedora 26, it probably stopped working

So the other day I noticed this rather unfortunate bug on one of my servers.

Fedora 26 included a jump from DNF 1.x to DNF 2.x. It seems that DNF 2.x came with a poorly-documented change to the implementation of dnf-automatic, the tool it provides for automatically notifying of, downloading and/or installing updates.

Simply put: if you had enabled dnf-automatic in Fedora 25 or earlier, using the standard mechanism it provided - edit /etc/dnf/automatic.conf to configure the behaviour you want, and run systemctl enable dnf-automatic.timer - then you upgraded to Fedora 26, then it probably just stopped working entirely. If you were relying on it to install updates for you...it probably hasn't been. You can read the full details on why this is the case in the bug report.

We've now fixed this by sending out an update to dnf which should restore compatibility with the DNF 1.x implementation of dnf-automatic, by restoring dnf-automatic.service and dnf-automatic.timer (which function just as they did before) while preserving the new mechanisms introduced in DNF 2.x (the function-specific timers and services). But of course, you'll have to install this update manually on any systems which need it. So if you do have any F26 systems where you're expecting dnf-automatic to work...you probably want to log into them and run 'dnf update' manually to get the fixed dnf.

PSA ends!