Learn the steps to upgrade an end-of-life operating system to a new version.
Requirements
- root access to the server
- backup must be taken before starting
Instructions
Before starting with the major release upgrade, make sure that you update to the latest versions of all packages installed on the current release:
There may have been some updates which may require a reboot and therefore we must reboot first before we start upgrading:
After the reboot we will update the /etc/apt/sources.list to target the next release (in this case we go from Buster to Bullseye):
Now that the latest release is set as target, perform the upgrade and finally initate a reboot:
Verify the upgrade has worked:
Before starting with the major release upgrade, make sure that you update to the latest versions of all packages installed on the current release:
Next, you must upgrade your installed packages to their latest versions:
Once it has finished, you are ready to do dist-upgrade which will perform further upgrades that may need to be done:
Finally, you are now ready for the major release upgrade. Ubuntu is now providing a tool called "do-release-upgrade" which makes upgrading safer and easier. Let's start with the upgrade:
Follow the instructions which will mainly consist of confirming you wish to proceed with specific actions.
Please note:
- You could be asked by the tool to restart your server first before doing the upgrade. To do this, just type "reboot" and press enter.
- You will be advised that doing this over an SSH connection is not recommended. Since there is no physical access to the server, SSH is the primary way to access your server. Ubuntu will start a new SSH service on another port so that in case of failure you still have another access. Furthermore, you will still be able to access the server through the console if you are completely locked out by SSH.
- During the upgrade, you may be asked to confirm the removal of packages that are no longer being supported. You need to double check this has no impact on your applications before continuing.
Once the upgrade has completed, the server will reboot itself and you will lose connection until it boots up again. Few minutes later you should be able to log in and see a message similar as the following (the version will be the next available version compared to your previous version):
Now verify if your applications are working as expected. In case there are issues, we recommend restoring your backup that was taken prior to the upgrade.
Before starting with the major release upgrade, you first need to ensure that you will update to the latest versions of all packages installed on the current release. Enter this command:
Now reboot the server:
Once the server is rebooted, install the upgrade package:
Now that you have the required package, you can perform the upgrade. System upgrades are only officially supported and tested over 2 releases at most (e.g. from 32 to 34). In this example we will upgrade from Fedora 32 to 33:
Once the version is downloaded and the upgrade process has been initiated, the server will reboot to complete the upgrade.
It may take a while before you an connect again to the server as the upgrade takes a while to be completed.
Verify if your applications are working as expected. In case there are issues, we recommend restoring your backup that was taken prior to the upgrade.
Go further
For more information and tutorials, please see our other Public Cloud support guides or explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.