Is it safe to do `apt dist-upgrade` on a Mark 1?

I’m used to keeping my Linux machines updated. Is it ok to do the same for my Mark 1? i.e. is it ok to periodically run sudo apt dist-upgrade?

I’m asking in case there’s something special configured that a update would disrupt.


The Mark 1 is a real achievement for humanity - getting such functionality and personality from a Raspberry Pi… amazing. Bravo folks, keep up the good work!

Hey @tomfotherby, maybe this thread can help answer some of your questions. It seems like there could be issues with doing an apt dist-upgrade

@Mn0491 - Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll hold off on the update for the moment. They are not joking that this is an “advanced prototype”. Fair do’s. Raspbian stretch came out today - onwards and upwards!

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I forgot to post: Shortly after doing the 92 out of 95 upgrades – maybe four days later – I tried those final three upgrades again and got over that hump. I’m now in sync with whatever the powers that be are putting out there.

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Hi,

Just in case it catches someone out, there is a rather large difference between apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade.

I upgraded my Mark-1 using apt-get upgrade to take the core OS up to the latest packages for Jessie and mycroft-core 0.8.21. This took about 30mins to upgrade 103 packages and all works after a reboot.

This is not the same as apt-get dist-upgrade which would attempt to upgrade the underlying Raspian OS from Jessie to Stretch, which is a significantly larger change.

BTW - you can check Debian versions with lsb_release -a.

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Thank you! You made this clear and it’s helpful.

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This is not actually what upgrade and dist-upgrade do. Both of these commands upgrade within the current distribution. The dist-upgrade command will uninstall some packages if that is necessary to upgrade some of the packages. The plain upgrade command will never uninstall packages but instead will leave some packages not upgraded.

To upgrade to stretch you would need to replace all instances of jessie with stretch in /etc/apt/sources.list and then run apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade

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I had to run sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-kernel as well to get a booting version of stretch. Looks like mycroft-core is not ready for Raspbian Stretch yet as of today due to at least this issue and possibly others https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core/issues/1285