How to upgrade to Fedora 24 from Fedora 23

Fedora 24 was released a two days ago and while new users can simply download and install Fedora, those running Fedora 23 may want to upgrade their systems. The Fedora team has made the upgrade task pretty easy and straight forward. However, we do need to prepare our servers or machines for a smooth upgrade. This tutorial describes how to upgrade to Fedora 24 from Fedora 23.

I strongly recommend you to backup your important data and configuration files to any external hdd or USB drives to avoid data loss. Also, make sure you have uninterrupted power supply and fast Internet connection.

For your information, the upgrade task is same for Fedora desktop and Server, and you can also upgrade your remote Fedora VPS using this method.

Let us find our current Fedora version details. To do so, run:

cat /etc/*-release

Sample output:

Fedora release 23 (Twenty Three)
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="23 (Twenty Three)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=23
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 23 (Twenty Three)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:23"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=23
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=23
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy
Fedora release 23 (Twenty Three)
Fedora release 23 (Twenty Three)

Now, Log in to your Fedora system. Or, you can run the upgrade process locally if you have physical access of it.

I am going to upgrade my remote Fedora 23 desktop, so logged-in to that system as shown below.

ssh sk@192.168.1.102

Here, sk is my remote system's username and 192.168.1.102 is my remote system's IP address.

Update your Fedora 23 system:

sudo dnf update

sudo dnf upgrade

After updating the Fedora system, reboot once to apply all changes.

Now, it's time to start the upgrade process.

Upgrade to Fedora 24 from Fedora 23

Please be mindful that during upgrading your system may crash or disconnect from the SSH session. In such cases, you will probably be disconnected from the SSH session, and you might end up with broken system. To avoid this problem, we're going to use "screen" tool that can be used to reconnect to the your Fedora system in-case it is disconnected while upgrading.

Install screen tool using the following command:

sudo dnf install screen

Switch to the screen session with command:

screen

In case you’re disconnected from your Fedora system, you can again re-connect to it with the following command:

screen -Dr

Install DNF plugin:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Now, start upgrade Fedora 24 using the following command:

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=24

The latest packages will start to download in your system. Grab a cup of coffee. It will take a while depending upon your Internet connection speed.

Note:

• If some of your packages have unsatisfied dependencies, the upgrade will refuse to continue until you run it again with an extra --allowerasing option. This often happens with packages installed from third-party repositories for which an updated repositories hasn’t been yet published. Please study very careful the output and examine which packages are going to be removed. None of them should be essential for system functionality, but some of them might be important for your productivity.
• In case of unsatisfied dependencies, you can see more details if you add --best option to the command line.

Once all required packages are downloaded, reboot your Fedora to start the upgrade.

To reboot your Fedora system, run:

sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

The actual upgrade process will start now.

After completing the upgrade process, the system will automatically reboot.

Select Fedora 24 from the boot menu.

That's it. Your system has been successfully upgraded to Fedora 24.

Login to your newly upgraded Fedora system.

To know the Fedora version details, run:

cat /etc/*-release

Sample output:

Fedora release 24 (Twenty Four)
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="24 (Twenty Four)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=24
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 24 (Twenty Four)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:24"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=24
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=24
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy
Fedora release 24 (Twenty Four)
Fedora release 24 (Twenty Four)

That’s it. Start using your new Fedora 24 system.

Like I said already, this method is same for both Fedora desktop and Server.

Cheers!