Intermediate Application Updates
Author(s): Matthias Lee (ml2322)
Last Updated: 8-13-2025
Recommended Prerequisites (click to expand)
- Intro application updates
Some problems with apt update/upgrade
Using apt update and apt upgrade will work ~95% of the time to update software. However,
there are a few things that can prevent apps from being updated like this.
Held Packages
APT includes a feature called hold. Packages marked as held will be kept at their current version
and not updated even if a new version is available. To find all held apt packages, we can use apt-mark:
user@system:~$ sudo apt-mark showhold
If there are any held packages, you can unhold them with apt-mark like so:
user@system:~$ sudo apt-mark unhold xyz
After this, you can do apt update and apt upgrade again, and the previously-held package will be
updated.
user@system:~$ sudo apt update
...
user@system:~$ sudo apt upgrade
...
Incomplete sources
When you run sudo apt update to update apt's sources, it is fetching the package lists from APT
repositories listed in /etc/apt/sources.list If this list is missing some repositories, APT
won't be able to fetch all of the updates. Every distro has different default sources, so you'll
need to use something like the website in Further Reading to find the default sources.list for your
distro. Once you find that, ensure that yours contains all the same lines and nothing is commented
out that shouldn't be. Once that's fixed, update your apt sources and upgrade.
user@system:~$ sudo apt update
...
user@system:~$ sudo apt upgrade
...