Complete Guide for Upgrading to CentOS Stream 9

5 January 2025 / Commenti

CentOS Stream 9 represents a significant step forward for those using CentOS as their operating system. With the use of the Elevate tool, the upgrade process becomes easier and more manageable. In this guide, we'll show you how to upgrade CentOS Stream 9 in the easiest way.

Why Upgrade to CentOS Stream 9?

Access to the latest features and enhancements.
Continued support for security updates and patches.
More stability for production environments.

Steps for Upgrading

1. Checking System Requirements

Before you begin, make sure your system meets the minimum requirements for CentOS Stream 9.

Enough disk space.
Full data backups.
Stable Internet connection.

Recommended CentOS Stream 9 requirements

RAM Memory: 2 GB or higher
Disk Space: 10 GB

Minimum CentOS Stream 9 requirements

RAM Memory: 1 GB
Disk Space: 1 GB for minimal installation

2. Installing Elevate

Elevate is a tool designed to facilitate upgrading between major versions, Red Hat does not provide official distribution upgrade tools for CentOS Stream, Elevate is among the best options available.

As a first step, let's update the distribution to the latest packages

sudo dnf update

To install it as a first step you need the elevate-release package containing the repository and GPG key.

sudo yum install -y http://repo.almalinux.org/elevate/elevate-release-latest-el$(rpm --eval %rhel).noarch.rpm

Having installed the previous package we can install the leapp packages for the upgrade to our target OS we want to upgrade to. The options can be:

leapp-data-almalinux
leapp-data-centos for upgrading to CentOS Stream distributions
leapp-data-oraclelinux
leapp-data-rocky

In our case we want to upgrade to CentOS Stream 9, so we install

sudo yum install -y leapp-upgrade leapp-data-centos

3. Preemptive testing

To assess that it is possible to continue with the upgrade we perform preupgrade checks with:

sudo leapp preupgrade

In this example a bootloader configuration file grub

============================================================
                      REPORT OVERVIEW
============================================================

Upgrade has been inhibited due to the following problems:
    1. File "/etc/default/grub" does not exist!

Reports summary:
    Errors: 1
    Inhibitors: 1
    HIGH severity reports: 0
    MEDIUM severity reports: 0
    LOW severity reports: 0
    INFO severity reports: 0

Before continuing, review the full report below for details about discovered problems and possible remediation instructions:
    A report has been generated at /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt
    A report has been generated at /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.json

============================================================
                   END OF REPORT OVERVIEW
============================================================

Esempio di check riuscito

 ============================================================
                      REPORT OVERVIEW
============================================================

HIGH and MEDIUM severity reports:
    1. Remote root logins globally allowed using password 2.
    2. Detected custom leapp actors or files.
    GRUB2 core will be automatically updated during the upgrade 3.

Reports summary:
    Errors: 0
    Inhibitors: 0
    HIGH severity reports: 3
    MEDIUM severity reports: 0
    LOW severity reports: 3
    INFO severity reports: 2

Before continuing, review the full report below for details about discovered problems and possible remediation instructions:
    A report has been generated at /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt
    A report has been generated at /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.json

============================================================
                   END OF REPORT OVERVIEW
============================================================

4. Upgrading to CentOS 9

Following successful testing, run the following command to start the upgrade:

sudo leapp upgrade --no-rhsm

After the package upgrade procedure is complete, you are prompted to reboot

Reboot the system to continue with the upgrade. This might take a while depending on the system configuration.
Make sure you have console access to view the actual upgrade process.

Reboot with the command:

sudo reboot

5. Verify Post-Upgrade

On completion, verify that all services are working properly:

sudo systemctl status

Also check that custom configurations are intact.

Frequent Questions (FAQ)

What are the minimum requirements for CentOS Stream 9?

You must have at least 20 GB of free space and 2 GB of RAM to run the system optimally.

Can I undo the upgrade?

You cannot undo an upgrade, but you can restore a previous backup or snapshot.

Is Elevate safe to use?

Elevate, is a tool developed by the Alma Linux project, ad-hoc to manage upgrades, however, at the time of writing this article, Red Hat has not released an official tool for upgrading CentOS Stream distributions. The official procedure is to reinstall of the distribution.

What is CentOS 10 Stream?

CentOS Stream 10 is the rolling-release version of CentOS, which provides continuous updates and anticipates future versions of RHEL.

Is CentOS 10 Stream still supported?

Yes, CentOS Stream 10 is still supported and will continue to receive updates until the next transition to CentOS Stream 11

How to download CentOS 10 Stream?

You can download CentOS Stream from the official CentOS website in the download

Will there be CentOS Stream 11?

Yes, CentOS Stream 11 is under development and will be available as the next rolling-release version for CentOS users.

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