Question

sudo apt upgrade, offers some questions?

Posted on October 25, 2023
DigitalOcean Droplets
Asked by userdo

I created a droplet(which I understand is a digitalocean virtual machine), that went fine. I went to the console, and I did sudo apt update,(which went fine), and then I did sudo apt upgrade. But when doing sudo apt upgrade, I ran into things that aren’t normal.

For the droplet I went with the default, which is Ubuntu 23.04 x64

I did sudo apt update that’s fine

Then I did sudo apt upgrade and this screen appeared which isn’t normal

I’ve done sudo apt upgrade and not have this happen

Should I not do sudo apt upgrade, like is it not generally recommended?

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KFSys

Site Moderator

• October 25, 2023

Accepted Answer

Heya,

It’s alright to do an apt update & apt upgrade, infact it’s needed.

The prompt you’re seeing is a common one for the OpenSSH server (sshd) configuration file (/etc/ssh/sshd_config), especially if you’ve made any customizations to it.

You’ll typically be presented with a few options:

Install the package maintainer’s version: This will overwrite your customizations with the new version from the package. This is not usually recommended if you have intentionally made changes that you wish to keep.
Keep the local version currently installed: This will retain your customized version and ignore the version in the package. This is the option to pick if you’ve made changes and know they’re still compatible with the new package version.
Show the differences between the versions: This option will give you a side-by-side diff of the two versions, showing what has changed.
Merge the two versions (manually): Some systems will offer an option to manually merge the changes, allowing you to decide line-by-line what to keep.
Start a new shell to examine the situation: This lets you drop into a shell to investigate further before making a decision.

Given the sensitivity of the SSH configuration (it governs how you can remotely access the machine), it’s usually a good idea to carefully consider these options. If you’ve made changes to sshd_config and are confident about them, you might opt to keep the local version. However, if you’re unsure or if you believe the package update might contain important changes or fixes, you might want to see the differences first and then decide.

With that said, I’ve tested it and keeping the local changes is fine.