How To Upgrade Ubuntu 21.04 To Ubuntu 21.10

In this tutorial, we will show you how to upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10. For those of you who didn’t know, Ubuntu 21.10 is a non-LTS release, which means it will be supported for 9 months only, until July 2022. If you prefer stability over bleeding edge, then stick with Ubuntu 20.04. But if you want to experience the latest and greatest software, you can follow this tutorial to upgrade.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) to Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri).

Note: Before starting any upgrade process, you must back up all the data you have. Although the process is safe, it’s never too much to do for your own good.

Prerequisites

• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Upgrade Ubuntu 21.04 To Ubuntu 21.10

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri).

To upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10, run the following command to upgrade existing software:

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Next, make sure you have update-manager-core and ubuntu-release-upgrader-core package installed:

sudo apt install update-manager-core ubuntu-release-upgrader-core

After that, edit a configuration file using a nano text editor:

sudo nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

At the bottom of this file, change the value of Prompt from lts to normal:

# Default behavior for the release upgrader.

[DEFAULT]
# Default prompting behavior, valid options:
#
#  never  - Never check for a new release.
#  normal - Check to see if a new release is available.  If more than one new
#           release is found, the release upgrader will attempt to upgrade to
#           the release that immediately succeeds the currently-running
#           release.
#  lts    - Check to see if a new LTS release is available.  The upgrader
#           will attempt to upgrade to the first LTS release available after
#           the currently-running one.  Note that this option should not be
#           used if the currently-running release is not itself an LTS
#           release, since in that case the upgrader won't be able to
#           determine if a newer release is available.
Prompt=normal

Save and close a file, then execute the following command below:

do-release-upgrade -d

Step 3. Verify System Information.

Once the installation process is finished, we reboot and we will be on Ubuntu 21.04 or check your Ubuntu version with the following command:

lsb_release -a

Output:

Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 21.10
Release:	21.10
Codename:	Impish

Congratulations! You have successfully upgraded Ubuntu. Thanks for using this tutorial for an upgrade from Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) to Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Ubuntu website.