Last time, I showed you how I backed up all my Proxmox VMs and config to my Synology NAS.

Now it’s time to actually do the ugprade.

Upgrades, actually, as I need to go 7.0 -> 7.4 -> 8.0.

Picking up our step count from last time…

Step 3: Get up to Date

Hadn’t run updates in a while (Proxmox just works LOL), so let’s do that:

apt update
apt upgrade
reboot

Step 4: Upgrade to 7.4

Now let’s upgrade to 7.4:

apt dist-upgrade
reboot

After this, pveversion showed 7.4.

Step 5: Bookworm!

Proxmox 8.0 requires Debian 12, “bookworm”.  I was still on bullseye.  Upgrading Debian is very easy.

sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

This changes all the bullseye repos to bookworm repos.  Then:

apt update
apt dist-upgrade
reboot

(To be honest, I was typing ‘apt-get’ instead of ‘apt’ this whole time because I picked up that habit somewhere years ago).

When you’re back, check:

# cat /etc/debian_version 
12.1

Woot!

Step 6: Setup for Upgrade

Make sure you have this line in /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription

(Assuming you’re a hobbyist like me who doesn’t pay for a subscription.). The previous sed command in Step 5 should have changed this as well.

Step 7: Check for Issues

Run:

pve7to8 --full

This will produce a detailed report of anything that might be a problem in the upgrade.

In my case, the only warning was that there guests running.  I stopped them.

Step 7: Upgrade to 8

And now:

apt-get update
apt dist-upgrade
reboot

And then:

# pveversion
pve-manager/8.0.4/d258a813cfa6b390 (running kernel: 6.2.16-8-pve)

This was my first experience upgrading Proxmox and I was really pleased how easy and problem-free it was.  Proxmox is enterprise-grade and there are providers in our community who host using it.  It’s awesome that this product is available for hobbyists to enjoy as well 👍

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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