Keeping the system up to date¶
The operating system consists of two parts that must be updated separately.
Update the Armbian OS¶
For the base operating system, run:
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armbian-upgrade is Armbian’s wrapper around APT: it refreshes the package lists, upgrades all installed packages, then cleans the package cache and removes anything no longer needed (apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, followed by apt-get clean and apt-get autoremove). It elevates itself with sudo automatically, so you can run it as a normal user.
The Update process can take quite some time in case you are using an old or a cheap SD card and/or experience heavy load.
Users with a desktop will find graphical tools that allow one to update the system packages without using the command line.
Armbian provides a firmware package freeze feature to provide you with the possibility to upgrade all packages but the firmware. This prevents unpleasant surprises on functionality regressions that can come with kernel upgrades. To enable or disable this feature, look for
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within armbian-config.
If the kernel was upgraded during this process, you will be prompted to reboot at the next login.
Upgrade the Armbian OS
When a new major release of Debian or Ubuntu is out, we recommend to start with a fresh image. While it is possible to do what is called a “dist-upgrade”, the process is largerly in the domain of the underlaying Debian or Ubuntu user space. We provide only an experimental Distribution upgrades feature for armbian-config.
Userspaces distribution upgrades are neither tested nor supported. Therefore Armbian cannot provide any support if something goes wrong.
Update the boot loader¶
The second part that can be updated is the boot loader.
First, update all packages as described in the previous section. Then run:
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and select:
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