Debian 10.3 Released

Debian Linux

Pretty cool! I almost missed that Debian 10.3 got released last week. This is a corrective release, meaning it’s about improving stability and security rather than about introducing major innovations.

Upgrade Debian 10.2 to 10.3

I only have one dedicated server running Debian 10, and will possibly reinstall even that – turns out I’m much more used to CentOS servers than anything else.

BUT this server is still there, so why not upgrade it?

Step 1: Update Debian repositories

First, we run apt-get update. I never noticed it before, but apparently this command is clever enough to recognize that InRelease changes version from 10.2 to 10.3 (see the last line of the output):

root@srv:~ # apt-get update
 Get:1 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster InRelease [122 kB]
 Get:2 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates InRelease [65.4 kB]
 Get:3 https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic InRelease [64.4 kB]
 Ign:4 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/non-free Sources
 Ign:5 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/main Sources
 Ign:6 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/main amd64 Packages
 Ign:7 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/main Translation-en
 Ign:8 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/non-free amd64 Packages
 Ign:9 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/non-free Translation-en
 Get:4 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/non-free Sources [86.3 kB]
 Get:5 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/main Sources [7,832 kB]
 Get:10 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates/main Sources [102 kB]
 Get:11 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates/main amd64 Packages [176 kB]
 Get:12 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates/main Translation-en [92.8 kB]
 Get:6 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/main amd64 Packages [7,907 kB]
 Get:7 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/main Translation-en [5,970 kB]
 Get:8 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/non-free amd64 Packages [88.0 kB]
 Get:9 http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster/non-free Translation-en [88.7 kB]
 Fetched 22.6 MB in 3s (6,828 kB/s)
 Reading package lists… Done
 N: Repository 'http://mirrors.online.net/debian buster InRelease' changed its 'Version' value from '10.2' to '10.3'

Step 2: Upgrade packages and Debian distro

apt-get dist-upgrade brings all the packages to the current release of your Debian/Ubuntu distro. In my case,

root@srv:~ # apt-get dist-upgrade
 Reading package lists… Done
 Building dependency tree
 Reading state information… Done
 Calculating upgrade… Done
 The following NEW packages will be installed:
   linux-headers-4.19.0-8-amd64 linux-headers-4.19.0-8-common linux-image-4.19.0-8-amd64
 The following packages will be upgraded:
   base-files e2fsprogs git-man libboost-iostreams1.67.0 libboost-system1.67.0 libcom-err2 libcups2 libcupsimage2 libext2fs2 libgnutls30 libidn2-0
   libnss-systemd libopenjp2-7 libpam-systemd libpython3.7 libpython3.7-dev libpython3.7-minimal libpython3.7-stdlib libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules
   libsasl2-modules-db libss2 libsystemd0 libtiff5 libtimedate-perl libudev1 linux-compiler-gcc-8-x86 linux-headers-amd64 linux-image-amd64 linux-kbuild-4.19
   linux-libc-dev openssh-client openssh-server openssh-sftp-server python-apt python-apt-common python3-apt python3.7 python3.7-dev python3.7-minimal sudo
   systemd systemd-sysv udev
 44 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
 Need to get 129 MB of archives.
 After this operation, 325 MB of additional disk space will be used.
 Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
...

Step 3: Reboot (when convenient)

You don’t have to reboot immediately. The biggest reason to do it is to start using new version of Linux kernel, but there’s hardly a specific update in minor kernel upgrade that justifies immediate downtime.

Here’s the kernel version before reboot:

root@srv:~ # uname -a
Linux srv.ts.fm 4.19.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.67-2+deb10u2 (2019-11-11) x86_64 GNU/Linux

When possible, you should do a graceful reboot:

root@srv:~ # shutdown -r now

After system is back online, we can see that it’s running Debian Buster 10.3 now:

greys@srv:~ $ uname -a
Linux srv.ts.fm 4.19.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.98-1 (2020-01-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux

See Also

• Debian Buster
• Debian Linux
• Linux Kernel
• Linux Kernel 5.5