January 12, 2026

Fedora 43 -- upgrade via DNF

I upgraded my home machine from 42 to 43 without any issues. I do have some issues on that machine with the nvidia driver, but these are not related to the upgrade.

Cholla upgrade from 41 to 42

This machine is overdue and we will go 41 to 42 to 43.

The first thing is to get the machine up to date: The machine has been up for 205 days! 

su
dnf update (500+ packages)
reboot
The reboot goes quick, and now we are on to the actual upgrade: 
su
dnf upgrade --refresh
-- this, of course, does nothing
dnf -y system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=42
This downloads about 1807 packages, then: 
dnf system-upgrade reboot
This happens blind, and I just have to wait 20 minutes or so, then login and hope there are no problems. Indeed after 20 minutes I login and it is running F42.

Now, on the Fedora 43

We don't waste time, but progress right away to the F43 upgrade. 
su
dnf upgrade --refresh
-- this, of course, does nothing
dnf -y system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=43
The first time ever, the refresh actually does something, namely it pulls in a new version of systemd.
The download pulls in 1899 packages. 
dnf system-upgrade reboot
After a wait, I ssh back in and see: 
uname -a
Linux cholla 6.18.4-200.fc43.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jan  8 17:35:49 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux
The webserver runs OK, so I think this is good. The real testing will be on my home machine.

Now when I ssh to cholla, I am greeted with: 

Activate the web console with: systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
I wonder what this is? Something to investigate some rainy day.
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org