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I have my Raspberry Pi setup how I want, but I have an older version than what is currently available (2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.zip). How do I upgrade the kernel, firmware, etc.?

I have upgraded some using:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

I believe my current Raspbian version is 2012-07-15 based on this:

[kevin@raspberrypi ~]$ more /boot/issue.txt
Raspberry Pi reference 2012-07-15 (armhf)
Generated using spindle, http://asbradbury.org/projects/spindle/, d2c1253, stage4-lxde-edu.qed

I am not sure what kernel version this is, though.

Peter Mortensen
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kevin
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  • I think /boot/issue.txt is not modified since my cat /boot/issue.txt output is Raspberry Pi reference 2012-09-18 (armhf). And, like you, I installed a version released before 2012-10-28, probably 2012-09-19... BTW, you should use sudo apt-get upgrade to install the new dependencies needed by the upgrades. – Morgan Courbet Dec 17 '12 at 17:08
  • Now there is the Stretch version. This link shows how to do the upgrade, but I'm going to wait until it is on NOOBS. https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/71462/now-that-raspbian-stretch-has-been-released-should-jessie-users-rush-out-and-do – SDsolar Aug 22 '17 at 01:36

2 Answers2

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I figured out which kernel version I installed by looking at /proc/version:

[kevin@raspberrypi tmp]$ more /proc/version
Linux version 3.2.27+ (dc4@dc4-arm-01) (gcc version 4.7.2 20120731 (prerelease) 
(crosstool-NG linaro-1.13.1+bzr2458 - Linaro GCC 2012.08) ) #250 PREEMPT Thu Oct
 18 19:03:02 BST 2012

I followed scruss' suggestion to use rpi-update. I deviated a little from the install instructions which suggests to install into /usr/bin, but I just put it in my user directory:

[kevin@raspberrypi ~]$ wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O ./rpi-update && chmod +x rpi-update

After running rpi-update, I now have upgraded everything to 3.6.11.

[kevin@raspberrypi ~]$ more /proc/version
Linux version 3.6.11+ (dc4@dc4-arm-01) (gcc version 4.7.2 20120731 (prerelease) 
(crosstool-NG linaro-1.13.1+bzr2458 - Linaro GCC 2012.08) ) #340 PREEMPT Thu Dec
27 17:31:37 GMT 2012
kevin
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7

I don't use Raspian, but unless they've deviated significantly from Debian in their package management, aptitude update followed by aptitude upgrade, as you've done, should update the packages on the system. You could also try aptitude dist-upgrade.

I don't know if that will update the Kernel image or not, but I suspect that it will not. For the kernel, modules, and firmware, you'll probably want to download the latest binaries from GitHub: https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware. Just copy the contents of the boot directory onto your /boot/ partition. You'll also need to copy the modules directory to /lib on your system. You'll need to reboot to get the new kernel running, of course.

AdmiralNemo
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