Learn how to – Upgrade Single Package on Ubuntu / Debian using apt-get

Learn how to – Upgrade Single Package on Ubuntu / Debian using apt-get.

How can I upgrade a single package on Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint using apt-get command line tool?. The most common way of upgrading packages on Ubuntu/Debian is by running the command sudo apt-get upgrade. The problem with this is that all installed packages will be upgraded to the latest versions available in configured Ubuntu repositories.

What if you want to upgrade a single package with apt-get on Ubuntu or Debian machine?. This is relevant if you are afraid of having broken packages from upgrading everything.

Upgrade a single package on Ubuntu / Debian using apt-get

To upgrade a single package with apt-get on any Ubuntu / Debian based system, use the syntax:

sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade packagename

This will work for all Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint systems. Replace packagename with the name of the package you want to upgrade.

See example below to upgrade ubuntu-keyring.

$ sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade ubuntu-keyring
 Reading package lists… Done
 Building dependency tree       
 Reading state information… Done
 The following packages will be upgraded:
   ubuntu-keyring
 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 190 not upgraded.
 Need to get 22.4 kB of archives.
 After this operation, 4,096 B of additional disk space will be used.
 Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 ubuntu-keyring all 2018.09.18.1~18.04.0 [22.4 kB]
 Fetched 22.4 kB in 1s (34.5 kB/s)   
 (Reading database … 261497 files and directories currently installed.)
 Preparing to unpack …/ubuntu-keyring_2018.09.18.1~18.04.0_all.deb …
 Unpacking ubuntu-keyring (2018.09.18.1~18.04.0) over (2018.02.28) …
 Setting up ubuntu-keyring (2018.09.18.1~18.04.0) …

Upgrade multiple packages on Ubuntu / Debian / Linux Mint

To upgrade multiple packages, separate them by a space.

sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade thunderbird cinnamon cinnamon-common 

If you want to upgrade all installed packages, use the command:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Upgrade a single package / multiple packages on Ubuntu with a script

We can create a simple script that we’ll be passing package name(s) as arguments everytime you want to upgrade a single package with apt-get on Ubuntu or Debian system.

Create a script in /usr/local/bin/myupgrade with below content.

#!/bin/bash

pakage_names="$@"

[[ -z $pakage_names ]] && { echo "Usage: $(basename $0) package1 package 2 package.."; exit 1; }

# Check if package is already installed
for package in ${pakage_names[@]}; do
    if dpkg -s "$package" 2>/dev/null | grep -q Status.*installed; then
        echo "Attempting to upgrade $package"
        sudo apt-get --only-upgrade -y install $package
    else
        echo "Package $package is not installed, install it (y/n): "
        read selection
        if [[ $selection == "y" ]] || [[ $selection == "Y" ]]; then
            sudo apt-get -y install $package
        else
            echo "Okay!, next time"
        fi
    fi
done

Give the script an execution bit.

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/myupgrade

You must pass arguments to the script to to upgrade package.

$ myupgrade
Usage: myupgrade package1 package 2 package..

To upgrade single package, pass single argument at the end

$ myupgrade  util-linux
Attempting to upgrade util-linux
[sudo] password for jmutai:         
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information… Done
Suggested packages:
   util-linux-locales
The following packages will be upgraded:
   util-linux
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 182 not upgraded.
Need to get 902 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 util-linux amd64 2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.3 [902 kB]
 Fetched 902 kB in 2s (518 kB/s)     
 (Reading database … 261497 files and directories currently installed.)
 Preparing to unpack …/util-linux_2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.3_amd64.deb …
 Unpacking util-linux (2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.3) over (2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.2) …
 Setting up util-linux (2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.3) …
 Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) …
 Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) …
 Processing triggers for systemd (237-3ubuntu10.9) …
 Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) …

For multiple package, provide names separated by space.

$ myupgrade nplan openssl perl

If the package is not already installed, the script will ask you if you want to install it. Confirm by pressing “Y” or “y“.

$ myupgrade elinks
 Package elinks is not installed, install it (y/n)
 y
 Reading package lists… Done
 Building dependency tree       
 Reading state information… Done
 The following additional packages will be installed:
   elinks-data libfsplib0 liblua5.1-0 libtre5
 Suggested packages:
   elinks-doc tre-agrep
 The following NEW packages will be installed:
   elinks elinks-data libfsplib0 liblua5.1-0 libtre5
 0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 169 not upgraded.
 Need to get 1,062 kB of archives.
.....

That’s the end of our guide on how to upgrade a single package with apt-get on Ubuntu/Debian. I hope this was helpful and thanks for visiting.

Also check:

Add Debian 10 Buster official repositories to sources.list

How to Install add-apt-repository on Debian / Ubuntu

Creating Ubuntu Mirrors using apt-mirror