Include:Upgrading to latest release

When Alpine Linux is installed ins sys mode, e.g. on a hard drive, upgrading to a newer stable version is a straightforward package manager operation.

Repository Settings

First thing is to to edit or check the /etc/apk/repositories file.

Besides doing it manually (see below) this may also be done using one of the following shortcuts.

• Launching the corresponding alpine setup script,

  setup-apkrepos

  and pressing e to edit /etc/apk/repositories. Then adjusting (changing) the repository lines to the new version number by hand.
• Or, use a one-liner command to edit (change) all versions in the file "in place". This is how you'd change v2.5 to v2.6:

  sed -i -e 's/v2\.5/v2.6/g' /etc/apk/repositories

Note, subsequent manual changes of the version numbers in /etc/apk/repositories may be avoided for following releases, by having the repository lines refer to "latest-stable" instead of an absolute value:

http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/main http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/community

However, beware of initiating unexpected release upgrades then.

Manual editing of /etc/apk/repositories:

Edit the /etc/apk/repositories file using any editor of your choice (nano for instance) to edit the Alpine Linux package repositories.

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.19/main http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.19/community

In the above file, to upgrade Alpine Linux from version 3.19 to 3.20, simply replace the number 3.19 by 3.20 in all the places, so that the updated repositories file looks like below:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.20/main http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.20/community

Upgrading packages

Sometimes it is required to first upgrade just the Alpine Linux Package Manager itself to the latest available version, i.e. before upgrading any other package. This was the case, for example, when upgrading from a version of Alpine before 2.3.0_rc1. But always doing so should't hurt, either:

apk add --upgrade apk-tools

Next, to upgrade all installed packages:

apk upgrade --available

The --available switch is used to force all packages to be upgraded, even if they have the same version numbers. Sometimes changes in uClibc require doing this.

Note: All services that have been upgraded need to be restarted, to begin using the upgraded version. If the kernel is upgraded, it's required to reboot to begin using the upgraded version:

sync reboot