Upgrade Debian 9, (current WSL) to Debian 12 (bookworm testing)

upgrade-debian-wsl.md

Upgrade Debian 9 (current WSL) to Debian 12 (bookworm testing)

Note: I do not maintain this gist anymore, but people report that it still works. Please check the comments for any revisions or extra things you should take into consideration.

As of writing, the Debian distro for WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is quite old.

You can get more up-to-date package managers, text-editors and compilers by upgrading WSL to Debian 12 (current testing).

• Root required
• Use at your own risk, preferably on a fresh installation.
• Choose 'yes' when Debian requests to restart services.

1. Install and open Debian on WSL (if not already)

wsl --install -d debian
wsl -d debian

2. Go into root

sudo -s

3. Upgrade Debian 9 to 10

apt update -y && \
apt upgrade -y && \
echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main" > /etc/apt/sources.list && \
apt update -y && \
apt upgrade -y && \
apt dist-upgrade -y

4. Upgrade Debian 10 to 11

echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-updates main" > /etc/apt/sources.list && \
apt update -y && \
apt upgrade -y && \
apt dist-upgrade -y

5. Debian 11 to 12

echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main" > /etc/apt/sources.list && \
apt update -y && \
apt upgrade -y && \
apt dist-upgrade -y && \
apt autoremove -y && \
exit

Thanks for sharing this post, worked out wonderfully.

Thank you

I think we need to add a step to change the original /etc/apt/sources.list before step 3.

sudo sed -i s/deb.debian.org/archive.debian.org/g /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i 's|security.debian.org|archive.debian.org/debian-security/|g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i '/stretch-updates/d' /etc/apt/sources.list 

Reference：
repository - Debian stretch repositories 404 Not Found - Stack Overflow

thanks!

I've done something like this as far as organizing versions

grunk@BOHEMUTH-II:~$ ls -lash /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
total 20K
4.0K drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 22 16:01 .
4.0K drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4.0K Aug 22 15:58 ..
4.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 167 Aug 22 16:01 10.buster_sources.list
4.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 104 Aug 22 16:00 11.bullseye_sources.list
4.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 104 Aug 22 15:56 12.bookworm_sources.list
grunk@BOHEMUTH-II:~$

efficient, many thanks

Thanks for sharing this.. worked well for me

worked great, however only in WSL2 mode.
When it is WSL1, usrmerge fails.
This can be fixed via wsl --set-version Debian 2
After the install you can change it back if you need WSL for some reason (serial ports for example)

worked great, however only in WSL2 mode. When it is WSL1, usrmerge fails. This can be fixed via wsl --set-version Debian 2 After the install you can change it back if you need WSL for some reason (serial ports for example)

Why are you switching back and forth between WSL.v1 and WSL.v2? Why not just commit to migrating your instance(s) to v2 and staying there?

• Did you define the serial ports in your udev rules? If you did that in WSL.v1, then the migration to WSLv.2 should resolve any complications that arise out of those ports not working as intended from inside of your WSL.v2 container.

worked great, however only in WSL2 mode. When it is WSL1, usrmerge fails. This can be fixed via wsl --set-version Debian 2 After the install you can change it back if you need WSL for some reason (serial ports for example)

You do not need to switch to WSL2. As zhangboyangdescribed the issue here:

wsl --shutdown
wsl -u root
apt upgrade # or apt install usrmerge