Question: Running an update check on all the installed modules on my site takes quite some time, and sometimes even exceeds PHP's runtime limits. Leaving the module enabled makes using the web based administration very difficult, as many different actions cause it to make a full run.

Is there a way to leave the module enabled, but only have full updates triggered by cron instead of every time the status or module pages are visited in admin?

I'm using Drupal 6.26.

Answer: 
In regard to the **Update** module, my solution is to never use it on a live website, only in Staging or Devel, but not with the final website.

Also [Elysia Cron](http://drupal.org/project/elysia_cron) lets you to choose when you want to run all the hook\_crons. I think this is is a "must have" module in all drupal projects.
Yes. Of course. I don't think it is built-in, so you actually have a pretty cool idea for an easy but useful custom module. I actually made something very close to this not too long ago.

You create a module say updateManager, and in your module file add elysia cron as dependency, 

One of the goals of the module could be to have your module add an text field on the update configuration page to easily set the date and time you want update.php to run. 

This field supports crontab syntax 0 \* \* \* \* syntax, 

* Thanks to elysia cron api, it is easy to set, store and retrieve and play with cron task in your code. If you want you could even just create a cron task here that overides the main cron task and would be listed in elysia cron task panel. 

	+ In your custom module you can easily add the field to the 'update configuration form' with a form\_alter on the form.
	+ Another option is to turn off updates, and do it with a cron task that runs update via drush.