Raspberry Pi OS is a free operating system based on Debian, optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware, and is the recommended operating system for normal use on a Raspberry Pi. The OS comes with over 35,000 packages: precompiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation on your Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi OS is under active development, with an emphasis on improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages as possible on Raspberry Pi.
Updating and Upgrading Raspberry Pi OS
It’s important to keep your Raspberry Pi up to date. The first and probably the most important reason is security. A device running Raspberry Pi OS contains millions of lines of code that you rely on. Over time, these millions of lines of code will expose well-known vulnerabilities, which are documented in publicly available databases meaning that they are easy to exploit. The only way to mitigate these exploits as a user of Raspberry Pi OS is to keep your software up to date, as the upstream repositories track CVEs closely and try to mitigate them quickly.
The second reason, related to the first, is that the software you are running on your device most certainly contains bugs. Some bugs are CVEs, but bugs could also be affecting the desired functionality without being related to security. By keeping your software up to date, you are lowering the chances of hitting these bugs.
Using APT
The easiest way to manage installing, upgrading, and removing software is using APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) from Debian. To update software in Raspberry Pi OS, you can use the apt tool from a Terminal window.
Keeping your Operating System up to Date
APT keeps a list of software sources on your Pi in a file at /etc/apt/sources.list. Before installing software, you should update your package list with apt update. Go ahead and open a Terminal window and type:
sudo apt updateNext, upgrade all your installed packages to their latest versions with the following command:
sudo apt full-upgradeNote that full-upgrade is used in preference to a simple upgrade, as it also picks up any dependency changes that may have been made.
Generally speaking, doing this regularly will keep your installation up to date for the particular major Raspberry Pi OS release you are using (e.g. Buster). It will not update from one major release to another, for example, Stretch to Buster or Buster to Bullseye.
However, there are occasional changes made in the Raspberry Pi OS image that require manual intervention, for example a newly introduced package. These are not installed with an upgrade, as this command only updates the packages you already have installed.
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NOTE
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The kernel and firmware are installed as a Debian package, and so will also get updates when using the procedure above. These packages are updated infrequently and after extensive testing. |
If moving an existing SD card to a new Raspberry Pi model (for example the Pi Zero 2 W), you may also need to update the kernel and the firmware first using the instructions above.
Running Out of Space
When running sudo apt full-upgrade, it will show how much data will be downloaded and how much space it will take up on the SD card. It’s worth checking with df -h that you have enough free disk space, as unfortunately apt will not do this for you. Also be aware that downloaded package files (.deb files) are kept in /var/cache/apt/archives. You can remove these in order to free up space with sudo apt clean (sudo apt-get clean in older releases of apt).
Upgrading from Previous Operating System Versions
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WARNING
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Upgrading an existing image is possible, but is not guaranteed to work in every circumstance and we do not recommend it. If you do wish to try upgrading your operating system version, we strongly suggest making a backup first — we can accept no responsibility for loss of data from a failed update. |
Searching for Software
You can search the archives for a package with a given keyword with apt-cache search:
apt-cache search locomotive
sl - Correct you if you type `sl' by mistakeYou can view more information about a package before installing it with apt-cache show:
apt-cache show sl
Package: sl
Version: 3.03-17
Architecture: armhf
Maintainer: Hiroyuki Yamamoto <yama1066@gmail.com>
Installed-Size: 114
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libncurses5 (>= 5.5-5~), libtinfo5
Homepage: http://www.tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~toyoda/index_e.html
Priority: optional
Section: games
Filename: pool/main/s/sl/sl_3.03-17_armhf.deb
Size: 26246
SHA256: 42dea9d7c618af8fe9f3c810b3d551102832bf217a5bcdba310f119f62117dfb
SHA1: b08039acccecd721fc3e6faf264fe59e56118e74
MD5sum: 450b21cc998dc9026313f72b4bd9807b
Description: Correct you if you type `sl' by mistake
Sl is a program that can display animations aimed to correct you
if you type 'sl' by mistake.
SL stands for Steam Locomotive.Installing a Package with APT
sudo apt install treeTyping this command should inform the user how much disk space the package will take up and asks for confirmation of the package installation. Entering Y (or just pressing Enter, as yes is the default action) will allow the installation to occur. This can be bypassed by adding the -y flag to the command:
sudo apt install tree -yInstalling this package makes tree available for the user.
Uninstalling a Package with APT
You can uninstall a package with apt remove:
sudo apt remove treeThe user is prompted to confirm the removal. Again, the -y flag will auto-confirm.
You can also choose to completely remove the package and its associated configuration files with apt purge:
sudo apt purge tree
Using rpi-update
rpi-update is a command line application that will update your Raspberry Pi OS kernel and VideoCore firmware to the latest pre-release versions.
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WARNING
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Pre-release versions of software are not guaranteed to work. You should not use rpi-update on any system unless recommended to do so by a Raspberry Pi engineer. It may leave your system unreliable or even completely broken. It should not be used as part of any regular update process. |
The rpi-update script is supplied by a third party, "Hexxeh", and also supported by Raspberry Pi engineers. The script source can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update
What it does
rpi-update will download the latest pre-release version of the linux kernel, its matching modules, device tree files, along with the latest versions of the VideoCore firmware. It will then install these files to relevant locations on the SD card, overwriting any previous versions.
All the source data used by rpi-update comes from the GitHub repo https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-firmware. This repository simply contains a subset of the data from the official firmware repository, as not all the data from that repo is required.
Running rpi-update
If you are sure that you need to use rpi-update, it is advisable to take a backup of your current system first as running rpi-update could result in a non-booting system.
rpi-update needs to be run as root. Once the update is complete you will need to reboot.
sudo rpi-update sudo reboot
It has a number of options, which are documented at the Hexxeh GitHub repository at https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update
How to get back to safety
If you have done an rpi-update and things are not working as you wish, if your Raspberry Pi is still bootable you can return to the stable release using:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install --reinstall libraspberrypi0 libraspberrypi-{bin,dev,doc} raspberrypi-bootloader raspberrypi-kernel
You will need to reboot your Raspberry Pi for these changes to take effect.
Various Raspberry Pi peripheral products here: