Routinely Install Latest Raspbian Versions?

there are 2 schools of though on this one

2nd upgrading the operating system keeps you up to date with security fixes reducing the chances of something(or someone) untoward happening.

I tend to option 1 unless the item his accessible via external connections (such as but not limited to the internet). even being behind a firewall is no guarantee, what happens if someone on the inside of the network becomes infected?

'Stretch' is the latest raspbian and debian release. The most recent changes to the raspian images that I recall simply added a new wizard to make initial setup easier, an 'app chooser' and, I think, some improvements to bluetooth support. It is possible to add those features to your existing copy if it's important to you.

I do the 'sudo apt-get update' and 'sudo apt-get upgrade' cycle fairly often as that is how security updates, bug fixes etc. are promulgated. As I understand the next new version of debian (codename 'buster') will likely be released in 2019 - the corresponding raspbian version will come along after that.

Short answer - 'no'.

Good summary, though I'd tighten it up a little as:

2)2nd in all other cases, keep Raspbian up to date with versions and patches

Extension to (2): if it exchanges data with any other system that can transfer software, e.g. by exchanging SD cards, then keep it fully patched.

In addition, and I think this applies to both cases 1 and 2; if you upgrade or replace the application/script/whatever that you've installed to make it to do whatever it does, then its a good idea to bring Raspbian fully up to date as part of that process.

Option 1 is my preference too, but the Pi has internet connections, so I'll be doing the OS upgrade. Thanks for your reply.

Thank you for the helpful information. I'll be updating the OS. I was hoping to avoid that due to the fact that it's running headless, although I may try to use VNC Connect to do the configurations.

Thank you for your reply. I was hoping that the update/upgrade cycle would provide sufficient security without having to install the latest iteration of the OS.

Stretch, which you said you have, *is* the latest iteration of the OS, which he said.

I probably didn't use the right terminology. The version of Stretch that I have currently installed is from a download dated 2018-06-27. A newer version, dated 2018-10-09, is now available. Not knowing what these different downloads are called officially, I just used "iteration." Maybe these are considered "point" releases (like in Mint 18.2, 18.3, for example)?

If you have an SSH connection to your RPi you can do anything you want with it even if it is headless.

Using SSH to talk to an RPi from a Linux system is a no-brainer: it should 'just work' if you know its IP because starting sshd, the SSH server, is now the standard configuration and, provided you've enabled X11 forwarding, you can even run graphical packages on the RPi with it using your desktop, keyboard and mouse.

Its almost as easy from Windows - just install the PuTTY package on the Windows box. PuTTY provides a console window to login from and also offers scp file transfers, but doesn't support X11 forwarding (or didn't last time I used it - a long time ago as I haven't used Windows since about 2004.

Its also worth knowing that many FTP clients now support SSH file transfers. gftp, the graphical Linux FTP client for many distros is an excellent way of bashing files back and forth.

Moving from Mint 17 to Mint 18 (Or Fedora 27 to Fedora 28 in my case) is the Debian/Raspbian equivalent of moving from Jessie to Stretch. Your point versions don't seem to have an equivalent.

No, we got it. Like he said, as long as you use (dist-) upgrade, you're up to date. (Until they release a completely new version which will no longer be named Stretch.)

ssh and apt-get should do routine upgrades on a headless.

IME when doing serious version upgrades is usually safer to back up, wipe, reinstall new OS, spend a few days patching round all the new bugs that systemd has introduced, then when it's actually almost stable, reload your private apps and data back on...

IOW if the system really matters then build a clone on the new version and test it thoroughly rather than upgrading.

putty does support X forwarding provided you have an X server running on the windows box, I use Xming but i believe there are other options

You just have to use "testing " (or "stable") in the apt sources instead of the codename ("Strecth").

Bye Jack

Here's the script I run to do my routine upgrades:

========================= rpi_update ============================= #!/bin/bash if [ "$1" == '-?' ] then echo "Syntax: rpi_update" echo "Function: Runs apt_get functions" echo " update,upgrade,dist-upgrade,autoremove,autoclean" echo " in that order." echo "Options: none" exit 1 fi

apt-get update if [ $? -ne 0 ] then echo "apt-get update failed: rpi_update abandoned" exit 1 fi

apt-get upgrade if [ $? -ne 0 ] then echo "apt-get upgrade failed: rpi_update abandoned" exit 1 fi

apt-get dist-upgrade if [ $? -ne 0 ] then echo "apt-get dist-upgrade failed: rpi_update abandoned" exit 1 fi

apt-get autoremove if [ $? -ne 0 ] then echo "apt-get autoremove failed: rpi_update abandoned" exit 1 fi

apt-get autoclean if [ $? -ne 0 ] then echo "apt-get clean failed: rpi_update abandoned" exit 1 fi

========================= rpi_update =============================

I did the wheezy-> jessie in-situ upgrade by by following these steps:

My only deviation was that, since I don't do any work under the 'pi' user because there are advantages to using the same home directory on all your Linux systems (I have four including the RPi), I repeated it in my usual login and ran the version upgrade from there. Both upgrades were problem-free.

You can also set the version name to 'stable', which will make the switch from stretch to its successor automatic, but by doing that you lose control of exactly when that rather long process will take place. Whether that's a reasonable trade-off for not having to manually manage the change-over is something only you can decide.

Indeed, 'point release' is probably appropriate. Just FYI, you can find out your version number with 'cat /etc/*version'. On my PI, the file is /etc/Debian_version and shows '9.4'. On my desktop, it is /etc/debian_version and shows '9.5'. As previously noted, the raspbian updates trail the debian ones by a bit.

Interesting: on my Pi, it's /etc/debian_version, with a small d.

Mine, too. Maybe a typo from Ray. Find the name of the Debian version in /etc/apt/sources.list or this should work if you haven't edited that file:

head -n1 /etc/apt/sources.list | cut -d' ' -f3