Upgrade Ubuntu distribution

Posted: 18th September 2007 by Grant Perry in Linux, Operating systems

Firstly update the your repositories replacing with “breezy” with “dapper” for example. You can work out the release names and additionally even change the URL’s to a closer mirrors by referring to the official repository list. This can be done using:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

If you’re not familiar with vi, ESC leaves editing mode and INS enters editting mode. To save and quit when not in editing mode use:

:wq

To update the sources list then upgrade your distribution use the following commands after each other:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

Double check the the upgrade using:

apt-get -f install

Then reboot to make all your upgrades take effect:

shutdown -r now

Using the following command will then confirm your server’s version:

lsb_release -a

Update!

I’ve since found out the method above is not the recommended process for upgrading please refer to the preferred process using update-manager-core. Additionally the process I used above has been officially documented on the Ubuntu help site.


  1. Jordan_U says:

    Note that editing your sources.list manually is *not* the supported way of upgrading, see:

    http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

  2. Grant Perry says:

    Thanks for the information Jordan! I’ve updated the post with links to the official Ubuntu support pages…