How to update your Ubuntu VPS hosting kernel

This quick tutorial will guide you through how to update your Linux kernel on your Ubuntu VPS hosting. Updating the Kernel provides more support for the latest and greatest applications and also provides vital security patches to keep your data safe. In some cases updating the kernel will even improve the speed of your VPS for hosting so regular updates are a must for any VPS hosting owner! With that out of the way, let’s get into it!

N.B – Only users with root access (The root user of someone with sudo access) can update the kernel! Please take backups before updating the kernel in case of the unlikely event of a system/connection failure during the process

STEP 1
First, you should check your kernel version as you could already be on the latest Linux kernel. You should look up what the latest kernel is at the time of reading this article then compare it to the version on your server, which you can find by running:

uname -sr

STEP 2
Should you see that your kernel is out of date, you should prepare the system to update the kernel. Firstly you will need to update the repositories. Repositories are servers that contain a set of packages your system can read from and grab files, and so you need to update these first in order to access the latest kernel files for your system. If a newer kernel version is found during this process the operating system will locate it and note that it should be downloaded the next time you ask. To update your repositories run:

sudo apt-get update

STEP 3
Now you’ve updated your repositories, all that’s left to do is perform a distribution upgrade on your vps hosting. This is a simple procedure and only takes a single line command to complete. To upgrade your distro simple run the command:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The dist-upgrade process ensures that if a new process is dependant on another then the dependency is also installed, making this process totally safe to run providing you don’t quit during the process.

Congrats! You’ve just updates your kernal! It’s good practice to check the kernel version you’re running after doing the dist upgrade to ensure the process worked as intended, which can be done by running:

uname -sr

As I conclude this article there are a few points worth remembering:
– A kernel update isn’t the only thing you need to do to improve security, we have another article here all about securing your VPS for hosting!
– Always take regular backups in the unlikely event of system failure during the update as having a broken kernel will cause a system failure.
– This article was written for Ubuntu and may not work on all operating systems. If you want more info on other operating systems check out our article on the topic, here.

If you still need help, contact us.