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Full debian system upgrades

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Every once in a while (two years, ish), Debian releases a major system update. You should probably update your system for this.

Preparation

First, make sure the system is up-to-date on the current OS release:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo apt autoremove
$ sudo apt autoclean

Next, identify the current and next codename:

  1. Open /etc/apt/sources.list and identify the codename. For example, bookworm here:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main non-free-firmware
...

Identify the next codename version from this list: https://www.debian.org/releases/

Verify the current version you have with cat /etc/os-release (take note to verify it actually changed later).

Updating

  1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list, and any files under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, replacing all instances of the old codename with the new one.
  2. sudo apt update
  3. sudo apt full-upgrade
  4. reboot
  5. Repeat #2, 3, and 4 until no more updates are needed (typically one or maybe two reboots).

Cleanup

  1. Check cat /etc/os-release to confirm the upgrade was successful (the version info should be different than what you noted before)
  2. sudo apt autoclean
  3. sudo apt autoremove

Now might be a good time to go through the normal Debian Setup Steps and System Hardening if needed.

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