Upgrade from Jammy to Noble on IBM Cloud

Introduction

This how-to guide explains how to upgrade from Jammy (Ubuntu 22.04) to Noble (Ubuntu 24.04) on both IBM VPC and IBM Classic using the do-release-upgrade command. Despite many differences between the two, the upgrade process is identical for both IBM VPC and IBM Classic.

General Advice

Once you have decided to upgrade your system, the next question is how? There are two options depending on whether your system is setup/deployed with automation or whether it requires manual configuration.

For fully automated system deployments it is recommended to redeploy with new Noble instances instead of upgrading from Jammy.

For systems that cannot be easily created or destroyed and require manual configuration, running do-release-upgrade is a good option. However this option requires some manual intervention as explained below.

Getting started

Run the following command to start the upgrade process:

sudo do-release-upgrade

Manual intervention steps

While upgrading from Jammy to Noble, manual decision making will be needed for the following options that are presented.

Initial continue prompt

When you run the upgrade command, you’ll be prompted to continue. This is the first step in the upgrade process. You can either continue or cancel the upgrade.

Type y and press Enter to continue.

Additional SSH daemon

When upgrading in a session over SSH there is an inherent risk of losing access if something goes wrong with the SSH daemon. To mitigate this risk an additional SSH daemon is started on a different port as a backup.

The prompt notifies you that an additional SSH daemon will be started and you can either continue or cancel the upgrade.

Type y and press Enter to continue.

Optional firewall configuration

The new SSH daemon will be started on a different port (1022) and you’ll be asked if you want to update the firewall configuration to allow connections on this port. At this point, if you need to make changes, open a new terminal and ssh back into the instance (on port 22) and update the firewall configuration to allow connections on port 1022. If you need to make changes, follow the iptables instructions provided in the prompt.

Once you have made the changes, or are certain that you do not need to make any changes, type y and press Enter to continue.

Update sources.list

Since the IBM Classic Jammy image is configured to use internal mirrors by default, the sources.list entries will likely need to be updated from ‘jammy’ to ‘noble’.

Type y and press enter to automatically update the sources.list entries.

Start upgrade

A final prompt is provided before starting the upgrade. It gives information about the number of changes and the estimated time to complete because once started, the upgrade process cannot be canceled. At this stage you can continue, cancel or see additional details.

Auto-remove obsolete packages

After the upgrade is complete, you’ll be asked if you want to remove obsolete packages. This is a good practice to keep your system clean and free of unnecessary packages.

Type y and press Enter to automatically remove obsolete packages.

Restart to finish upgrade

Finally, a restart will be necessary for some parts of the upgrade to be applied. If you select no, you can use /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs to check for the packages that need a reboot.

Re-connect and confirm upgrade

After the upgrade is complete, you’ll be disconnected from the instance. Reconnect to the instance and confirm that the upgrade was successful.

Type lsb_release -a to check the release version. The output should show ‘24.04’ as the release and ‘Noble’ as the codename.

Celebrate

Congratulations! You have successfully upgraded your IBM Classic instance from Jammy to Noble. 🎉

Enjoy your instance running the latest Ubuntu LTS release with all the new features, improvements, and security updates.