Upgrading from older versions

Upgrading Alpine ≤v3.19 to v3.20.0

When upgrading existing installations using grub, make sure to update the installed bootloader before rebooting, otherwise your machine might not boot. For more information on this issue, please check the release notes

Upgrading Alpine v2.x to v3.x

Warning: Alpine Linux 3.x switched to a different libc implementation compared to previous versions. Because the new Musl libc is not ABI compatible with uClibc, there are additional steps required for an upgrade.

These versions are ANCIENT and sourcing compatible APKs will be difficult.

Installing statically linked tools

Statically linked version of apk-tools is needed, because the old musl version would stop working after a libc change (possibly in the middle of upgrade). Static version of busybox can be handy in case of the recovery from a failure.

apk add busybox-static apk-tools-static

Changing repositories to v3.x

To begin, you need to update your /etc/apk/repositories file. Here are some shortcuts for doing so:

• Launch

  setup-apkrepos

  Enter e to edit /etc/apk/repositories. Change the version number by hand.
• Or, edit the file in place. This is how you'd change v2.7 to v3.0:

  sed -i -e 's/v2\.7/v3.0/g' /etc/apk/repositories

Upgrading system

Use statically linked version of apk to update content of repository:

apk.static update

Simulating upgrade is recommended in order to detect issues beforehand:

apk.static upgrade --no-self-upgrade --available --simulate

With no problems encountered or after resolving them, start proper upgrade:

apk.static upgrade --no-self-upgrade --available

Upgrading from 2.0 or 1.10.x to Alpine Linux 2.2 and later

Since the apk tool has been significantly changed you need to download and install manually the latest version of apk-tools-static. We also install busybox-static just in case something goes wrong.

If current version is 1.10.x remove GNU Wget before attempting an upgrade:

apk del wget

Download busybox-static and install it:

wget https://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.0/main/x86/busybox-static-1.22.1-r9.apk apk add busybox-static-1.22.1-r9.apk

Download apk-tools-static and install it:

wget https://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.0/main/x86/apk-tools-static-2.4.4-r0.apk apk add apk-tools-static-2.4.4-r0.apk

Change repositories:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

... https://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.2/main # or any other mirror

Proceed with update and upgrade:

apk.static update apk.static upgrade --available

The --available switch is used to force all packages to be upgraded, even if they have the same version number, due to changes in uClibc.

Reboot the system to load new kernel

sync reboot