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.

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!