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I use Raspberry Pi's widely for local infrastructure because:

  • No need for speed
  • Low cost
  • Low power
  • Passive cooling -> no moving parts that can break (keep an eye on the flash card!)

As a fanboy of Debian I use Raspbian on all machines.

And from time to time the time you have to upgrade to the next stable distribution and here is a step-by-step documentation how to do this.

To execute commands access the Raspberry Pi local by monitor/keyboard or remote by SSH.

Preparation

  1. Please backup all your data before you start upgrading! There is only a small chance to lose your data but it can happen!
  2. Update your local package list with following command: 'sudo apt update'
  3. Update your old distribution to the latest stage with following command: 'sudo apt upgrade' followed by 'sudo apt autoremove'

Known issues:

Starting distribution Problem Solution
Jessie Network naming was changed in Stretch which can break your network (You get in trouble rebooting after dist-upgrade).

Add following text to /boot/cmdline.txt:
net.ifnames=0

Upgrade distrubution

sudo apt dist-upgrade -y

Upgrade firmware

sudo rpi-update

Reboot

Do activate the new firmware you have to 'sudo reboot'.

© 2024 Sevérina & Norbert Kümin

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