I’ve been running my home lab since 2021 and honestly thought my update routine was solid: apt update && apt upgrade, reboot, job done.
Turns out I was wrong. I was checking CVE‑2026‑31431 (Copy Fail) this morning and realised that despite my “successful” updates, I was still running a vulnerable kernel from March.
I’ve had to rethink how I handle host updates. If you’re relying on a standard upgrade and a reboot to keep Proxmox or Debian hosts safe, you might want to check if yours is lying to you as well.
apt dist-upgrade is a necessary change to your process in place of just upgrade.
I may be wrong but I think it’s apt-get dist-upgrade. apt full-upgrade does the same too.
When a kernel update requires a change in dependencies, something Proxmox kernels do frequently, apt just quietly “keeps back” the package. It doesn’t fail, it doesn’t break the system, and it doesn’t trigger a rollback. It just waits for me to notice.
This should save a click for hopefully everyone.
Yes obviously, if you do not update the packages then they do not get updated.
If you do not read the output of a command then you will not notuce that.
This is specific to Debian and Ubuntu so why not being more specific in the title?
I’ve been running Debian since 2007 and never understood the point of
apt upgrade.
When I update, I want the updated version for everything on my system.
I don’t want to arbitrarily hold back packages just because a dependency changed. I’ll decide for myself if that’s an issue in my deployment. And Debian is generally very good at keeping everything running exactly the same way between releases.I pin the release by name (not “stable”) and then
apt dist-upgradealways.apt just quietly “keeps back” the package. It doesn’t fail, it doesn’t break the system, and it doesn’t trigger a rollback. It just waits for me to notice. Since I wasn’t looking at the list of upgradable packages
Depends on what quietly means. To me it means “with no indication”. Any written warning is quiet, I guess, if one is not reading it.
Shouldn’t the upgrade also update the bootloader’s default entry to a new kernel? The way I’ve been doing it was apt update && apt dist-upgrade. And then reboot once every 1 to 2 years if I feel like it, am bored, or there’s all these news articles about a severe bug in the kernel.
There’s no point in digital hoarding; it just clutters the boot partition and makes future updates messier.
I feel personally attacked.
