Upgrading Alpine

From Alpine Linux
Revision as of 12:25, 4 May 2012 by Fab (talk | contribs)
Warning: Make sure that you have a backup of your important data before continuing to update your system..


Upgrading an Alpine Linux Hard-disk installation

When Alpine Linux is installed to hard drive, upgrading the installation is simple.

Upgrading to latest release

Repository Settings

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

Besides doing it manually (see below) this may 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 editing the repository lines to reflect the new version number.
  • Or, use a one-line command to edit all version numbers in the file "in place". Here's 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 future release upgrades by having the repository lines refer to "latest-stable" instead of an absolute value:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

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.

Manual editing of /etc/apk/repositories:


Edit the /etc/apk/repositories file using an editor (nano for instance) and if necessary, add references to the Alpine package repositories. In the example below, the file references the Alpine CD, so that if a requested package is available on the local media, it will be obtained from there instead of being downloaded from the remote repository:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.3/main

To upgrade, in this example, from version 3.3 to 3.19, simply change:

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

to

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

So that the file will look like this:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.19/main
Note: Starting with version 3.3, there is a new repository called community. Many packages have been moved from the main repository to the community repository to indicate that they are not guaranteed to be supported beyond six months. If you are using any of these packages, be sure to add the community repository. For example: http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.19/community

Above, only one possible repository is shown, however, http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/ may also be replaced with any geographically close mirror from: http://rsync.alpinelinux.org/alpine/MIRRORS.txt

Updating package lists

With the correct repositories file in place, the latest index list of available packages can be obtained with:

apk update

Tip: Adding the --update-cache or -U to another apk command, as in apk add -U ... or apk upgrade -U, has the same effect as always running apk update immediately before the other apk command. Instead of auto-update it only if the index has not been updated recently.

Upgrading packages

At times it is required to first upgrade just the Alpine Linux Package Manager itself to the latest available version, before upgrading any other package. This was the case, for example, when upgrading from a version of Alpine before 2.3.0_rc1. But simply always doing so shouldn'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 musl 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

Upgrading to Edge

An upgrade of Alpine Linux from a stable version to the rolling development version edge basically requires the same steps as Upgrading to latest release.

The crucial difference is, that when editing the /etc/apk/repositories file, all referenced repository versions (such as v3.19 or latest-stable) therein need to be pointing to edge as in:

https://<mirror-server>/alpine/edge/main

Warning: Do not enable stable and edge repos at the same time. This can break your system. Either use edge or stable.


After upgrading to edge, the currently installed edge version may be checked with

$ cat /etc/alpine-release

and referring to the build date that is attached to the release.