This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
---
Title : Raspberry Pi unattended upgrade Raspbian to Debian Testing
Author : Remy van Elst
Date : 27-07-2016
URL : https://raymii.org/s/blog/Raspberry_Pi_Raspbian_Unattended_Upgrade_Jessie_to_Testing.html
Format : Markdown/HTML
---
I'm working on a Nitrokey/SmartCard-HSM cluster article and therefore I needed
three identical computers. The current version of Raspbian (2016-05-27) is based
on Debian Jessie and comes with a version of OpenSC that is too old (0.14) to
work with the Nitrokey/SmartCard-HSM. Since there is no Ubuntu 16.04 official
image yet I decided to upgrade Raspbian to Debian Testing. Since I don't want to
answer yes to any config file changes or service restarts I figured out how to
do an unattended dist-upgrade.
![][1]
> The 3-Pi HSM cluster to be used for the cluster articles
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The [Nitrokey HSM][3] is an open hardware and open software device. It is a USB
version of the [SmartCard-HSM][4]. Both the [SmartCard-HSM][5] as the [Nitrokey
HSM][6] have sources available and are fully supported by the [OpenSC][7]
project.
I have multiple [articles on][8] the [Nitrokey HSM/SmartCard-HSM][9]. I also
have a lot of professional experience with large expensive HSM hardware.
### ARM repositories
Since Raspbian is a fork of Debian I first checked if there were any testing
repositories in [the mirrors][10] and as it turns out, [there are][11]. Since
the current version ships with `OpenSC 0.14` and there is a `0.16` package in
the repo [here][12] I suspected that that was the testing package. Installing it
on Jessie failed however, so a `dist-upgrade` it was.
### dist-upgrade
A regular repository change in `sources.list` and a `dist-upgrade` are very
interactive. It involves manual editing and the `apt` upgrade asks a lot of
questions, for example, retain a config file, restart services, changelogs, etc.
Since I tend to reinstall Pi SD cards often I don't want to do that manual
process every time. So here are the commands to do an unattended upgrade to
`testing`. Which in my case works the 7 times I tried now, without asking
questions. Do note that in your case it might hose your Pi and destroy all data
and projects on it, **so make sure you have a tested working backup**.
Place this in a file named `upgrade.sh`:
# vim upgrade.sh
# Remove any third party sources
rm -rf /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
# Change te repo's
sed -i -e 's/jessie/testing/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
# Update package lists
apt-get update
## UPGRADE ALL THE THINGS!!!
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical apt-get -q -y -o "Dpkg::Options::=--force-confdef" -o "Dpkg::Options::=--force-confold" dist-upgrade
# Remove no longer needed packages
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical apt-get -q -y -o "Dpkg::Options::=--force-confdef" -o "Dpkg::Options::=--force-confold" autoremove --purge
# FINISH HIM
reboot
Save it and then run it to start the upgrade:
bash ./upgrade.sh
### Debian upgrade, unattended explanation
Debian packages can prompt a user during install to generate custom
configuration, or in the case of MySQL, set a root password. It can also have
messages with different priorities. The `critical` priority is (almost) never
used so it won't prompt you. The `noninteractive` frontend tells the terminal
that you're not able to answer any questions.
The two `Dpkg::Options` mean the following:
* `--force-confdef`: upgrade the configuration file if there are no local changes
* `--force-confold`: otherwise, preserve the existing configuration file
If you supply `--force-confnew` instead of `--force-confold` it will overwrite
any changes by the new config file.
If you want to install a package unattended you know will ask questions (like
MySQL), then you can use `debconf` to set the answer to those questions
beforehand (scriptable, yay). In the case of MySQL on 12.04:
echo mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password password P@ssw0rd | debconf-set-selections
echo mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password_again password P@ss0wrd | debconf-set-selections
You can view all possible selections (questions) with the `debconf-get-
selections` command:
debconf-get-selections | grep mysql-server
Output:
mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password_again password
mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password password
mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/error_setting_password error
mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server-5.5/postrm_remove_databases boolean false
mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server-5.5/start_on_boot boolean true
If `debconf` is not installed, the package `debconf-utils` provides it.
[1]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/hsmcluster.jpg
[2]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212
[3]: http://nitrokey.com
[4]: http://www.smartcard-hsm.com/
[5]: http://www.smartcard-hsm.com/opensource.html
[6]: https://github.com/nitrokey
[7]: https://github.com/OpenSC/OpenSC/wiki/SmartCardHSM
[8]: https://raymii.org/s/articles/Get_Started_With_The_Nitrokey_HSM.html
[9]: https://raymii.org/s/articles/Nitrokey_HSM_in_Apache_with_mod_nss.html
[10]: http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/dists/
[11]: http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/dists/testing/
[12]: http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/opensc/
---
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