Upgrading Rubens

(November 6th 2025)

Starting from 10.10

studen@rubens:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
10.10

First update to archive repositories:

studen@rubens:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib

#comment out security and updates
#deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib

# buster-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
#deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib
#deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib

studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt get update
[..]
124 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt get upgrade

Update sources.list to bullseye:

studen@rubens:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
[..]
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main contrib
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib
[..]

Upgrade:

studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt update
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt upgrade
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt full-upgrade
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt --purge autoremove
studen@rubens:~$ sudo shutdown -r now

Final check:

studen@rubens:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
11.11

Attempted upgrade to 12 (bookworm) results in an error when building kernel.

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 6.1.0-40-amd64 (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/470.57.02/build/make.log for more information.

It seems nvidia is the culprit. Removing via

sudo apt-get remove --purge '^nvidia-.*'

After removal, upgrade runs to the end.

Installing CUDA

studen@rubens:~$ sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
studen@rubens:~$ sudo update-initramfs -u
studen@rubens:~$ sudo reboot
studen@rubens:~$ wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/debian12/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
studen@rubens:~$ sudo dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt-key del 7fa2af80
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt-get update
Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Get:3 https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/debian12/x86_64  InRelease [1,581 B]
Get:4 https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/debian12/x86_64  Packages [1,057 kB]
studen@rubens:~$ sudo apt install cuda-toolkit
[..]
Need to get 3,288 MB/3,335 MB of archives.
After this operation, 6,688 MB of additional disk space will be used.
[..]

Cuda is installed in /usr/local/cuda, set environment appropriately.
For executables like nvidia-smi install that separately.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-smi

Final outcome:

studen@rubens:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
12.12