Pacman as long as I know does not provide any method for sending an email notification when there are updates available. SSH into the Arch box just to find out if there are updates available is really annoying so I wrote a simple bash script to do the dirty work on my behalf. [root@arch ~]# cat /etc/cron.daily/check4updates.sh #!/bin/bash HOST=hostname DOMAIN=domain SUBJECT="System update: $HOST@$DOMAIN" EMAIL_ADDR="name@domain" ### Query pacman for available updates updates_raw=$(pacman -Syu <<< n) if echo $updates_raw | grep "there is nothing to do" then echo Everything is up to date else updates=${updates_raw#*Packages ([1-9])} ### extract packages update list up_raw=${updates%Total Download*} up=$(echo $up_raw | tr ' ' '\n') #echo -e "$up" > report.txt ### extract update size us=${updates#*Total Download*} #echo -e "\nTotal Download $us" >> report.txt ### compose email email_text="New updates available for host $HOST\n\n$up\n\nTotal Download$us" echo -e "$email_text" | mail -s "$SUBJECT" "$EMAIL_ADDR" fi To schedule the cron job to run everyday at 1 am edit the following files: …