How to Upgrade to Proxmox 5.3 (non-clustered)

I am in the process of dusting off one of my old Dell R710s to set up a training lab for one of my customers. Upon logging in, I saw that the current version of Proxmox installed on this server is 5.1.

I figured that since I am starting at square one on this server, I should put together a quick little guide on how to upgrade Proxmox. This has already been documented on the Proxmox Wiki however, I figured I would add some pictures and annotations for Proxmox novices.

Before you Upgrade

There’s a few steps to take before you try to upgrade Proxmox. This is to ensure a successful upgrade to minimize downtime and try to avoid having to roll back the update.

Set Correct Repository

As an initial first step after any installation, you should always make sure your Proxmox is configured with the correct repository. If you are not paying a subscription to Proxmox (such as myself but I will one day), you can still access updates to the software via their “no-subscription” repository. It is imperative that you set your Proxmox server to the correct repository before beginning the upgrade so it has the ability to pull the files applicable to its installation. To do this, follow the steps below:

1.Log into the Proxmox CLI as root

2. Change directory to the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

# cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

3. Open the “pve-enterprise.list” file with a text editor (i.e. nano)

# nano pve-enterprise.list

4. In the text editor, comment out the line for the pve-enterprise subscription as shown in the screenshot below:

5. Save the file and exit the text editor. For nano, press the following key sequence:

"Ctrl+X" - Command to exit
"Y" - Command to save
"Enter" - Command to confirm the filename to save to

6. Change directory to the /etc/apt/

# cd /etc/apt/

7. Open the “sources.list” file with a text editor (i.e. nano)

# nano sources.list

8. Add the following lines in the sources.list:

# PVE pve-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com                                
# NOT recommended for production use                                                         
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve stretch pve-no-subscription 

9. Save the file and exit the text editor. For nano, press the following key sequence:

"Ctrl+X" - Command to exit
"Y" - Command to save
"Enter" - Command to confirm the filename to save to

10. Once you are at the console, execute the command to update apt-get and confirm it is using the new repository

# apt-get update

Other Pre-Upgrade Tasks

1. Make sure to have a valid backup of all VMs and Containers
2. Make sure all VMs and Containers are powered off
3. Check the release notes and make sure you are upgrading from a supported release
4. Confirm at least 1GB of storage free on root partition and at least 60MB of storage free on boot partition

You can confirm the file space by using the following command below.

# df -h

An example of the output is as follows:

Perform the Upgrade

Once you have confirmed that the pre-requisites have been met, you can now perform the upgrade. To upgrade, run the following commands:

# apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

Once you have executed the commands above, you will be given a prompt to confirm the upgrade. Press “Y” to allow the update to begin.

After you confirm the update to begin, you will see a stream of log messages to inform that the update is progressing.

Once the update has completed, the prompt will be returned.

At this point, you can log into the Proxmox GUI and confirm that the version number has been updated.

Note: I did not need to reboot the Proxmox server after the upgrade was completed. I am not sure if this is required but I have not noticed any issues upon loading up my VMs.