Update the system from terminal

Question

I want to update my Ubuntu 14.04 system from the terminal and I know that sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade are the commands but when I check the update manager kernel updates are still there. Why is that ? and what can I do to update the kernel from terminal.

Solution 1

You need to perform dist-upgrade inorder to install/remove all dependencies related to the packages upgraded using upgrade. From the manual page of apt-get:

  dist-upgrade
       dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of
       upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies
       with new versions of packages; apt-get has a "smart"
       conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade
       the most important packages at the expense of less
       important ones if necessary. The dist-upgrade command may
       therefore remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list
       file contains a list of locations from which to retrieve
       desired package files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a
       mechanism for overriding the general settings for
       individual packages.

So, the better way of upgrading would be:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

However, be careful while using dist-upgrade as it might also remove packages to satisfy dependencies.

Solution 2

apt-get upgrade won't install new software or remove software, something you must when installing a new kernel... See the thread.

A thing you can do (taken from this thread, read full for more):

Use aptitude:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
sudo aptitude full-upgrade

You could also use sudo apt-get dist-upgrade instead of sudo apt-get upgrade

Comments

[bain]

dupe askubuntu.com/questions/81585/… and askubuntu.com/questions/194651/…

[jobin]

@bain: It might be a dupe, but not of those, the answers are pretty much the same but not the sense of the question.

[jobin]

@bain: They are still specific to one package(the kernel) and this is a general concern. I wouldn't flag it as a dupe of those.

[bain]

@Jobin Is this question not also specific to the kernel.. " but when I check the update manager kernel updates are still there. Why is that ?"

[jobin]

@bain: I guess they are, good catch.

[Chris]

@bain Why isn't this question the "dominant" question. You've marked it as a duplicate, yet this is the question I ran into trying to solve an unrelated, general problem...and the supposed "dominant" question it is a 'duplicate' of is a question I never would have reached in a million years.

[bain]

@bordeo I didn't mark this question as a duplicate - I just suggested some possibilities and some editors marked it as a duplicate. In general duplicates should be to questions that are older, have more upvotes/views and better answers. At the time this was flagged as a duplicate (2 years ago) the other questions probably were considered better by those metrics.