How to Upgrade Debian 7 Wheezy to Debian 8 Jessie

Debian 8.0 “Jessie” has been released on April 25th, 2015. After a long wait of 2 years finally Debian Team has announced his new release 8 code name “Jessie“.

If you are a user of Debian 7, this article will help your for upgrading your system to Debian 8 with simple steps. In this command all commands are running with root account. So before starting work login to your system as root account or use sudo with all commands.

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1. Backup Your Data

The first and very important thing is data. So we strongly recommend you to take backup any data which is important for you’re in existing system.

• Application codebases
• Databases
• Configuration files (eg: DNS, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Postgres etc)
• Emails and email accounts.
• User accounts details.

For more details read Chapter 4. Upgrades from Debian 7 (wheezy) recommendation by Debian before upgrading to Debian 8.0.

2. Upgrade All Packages of Debian 7

Before upgrading to Debian 8.0 first update all packages of current installed Debian system using following command.

root@debian:~:# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

3. Update sources.list Repository File

Now edit Debian apt repository file /etc/apt/sources.list and replace all “wheezy” with “jessie” to get Debian 8 packages. Replace all instances at once use sed command like below:

root@debian:~# cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.orig
root@debian:~# sed -i 's/wheezy/jessie/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

Old /etc/apt/sources.list File:

deb http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ wheezy main
deb-src http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ wheezy main

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main

# wheezy-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ wheezy-updates main
deb-src http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ wheezy-updates main

After changes new /etc/apt/sources.list File:

deb http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ jessie main
deb-src http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ jessie main

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ jessie-updates main
deb-src http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/debian/ jessie-updates main

4. Update all Packages Again

After replaces all references of repository source file, first update all packages before upgrading distribution.

root@debian:~:# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

5. Upgrade to Debian 8 Jessie

Finally upgrade your current Debian 7 distribution to Debian 8 Jessie using following command.

root@debian:~:# apt-get dist-upgrade

6. Verify Upgrade

At this point your system will have upgraded successfully to Debian 8. Lets reboot the instance first and check the version of upgraded system.

root@debian:~:# reboot

Verify current version of Debian.

root@debian:~:# lsb_release -a

Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (jessie)
Release:        8.0
Codename:       jessie

Congratulation’s You have successfully upgraded to Debian 8 “Jessie”. Have fun!