Depends on your distribution toolset (yum, zypper, apt, ...)
Write a script to integrate patches etc. into your system. The Script should be able to analyse the installation and generate useful logdata four your syslog (local or remote).
The TA for unix has an update-script, which is only useful for redhat or darwin based systems. For "linux", aka redhat-based distros, the output of yum check-update is parsed via awk. So you have to use a tool for integrating the patches.
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