DNF4-SYSTEM-UPGRADE(8)

💖 DNF4-SYSTEM-UPGRADE(8) 💖

okay bestie, this one's the DNF system-upgrade Plugin page — it lives in dnf-plugins-core and it's genuinely iconic. settle in. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

dnf4-system-upgrade — the DNF system-upgrade Plugin. that's it, that's the name. 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the DNF system-upgrades plugin gives you three commands: system-upgrade, offline-upgrade, and offline-distrosync. and okay, here's the tea: only the system-upgrade command needs you to bump the distribution major version (that's --releasever) compared to whatever version you've got installed. the other two? nope. 🦋

dnf system-upgrade is the recommended way to upgrade a system to a new major release, no cap. it replaces fedup (the old Fedora Upgrade tool, rip to a legend 🙈). before you go anywhere near it, make sure your system is fully upgraded first — like, actually fully:

dnf --refresh upgrade

also bestie, the system-upgrade command does extra side quests that are necessary for the upgrade, for example an upgrade of groups and environments. it's giving main character energy fr fr. ✨

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

dnf system-upgrade download --releasever VERSION [OPTIONS]

dnf system-upgrade reboot

dnf system-upgrade reboot --poweroff

dnf system-upgrade clean

dnf system-upgrade log

dnf system-upgrade log --number=<number>

dnf offline-upgrade download [OPTIONS]

dnf offline-upgrade reboot

dnf offline-upgrade reboot --poweroff

dnf offline-upgrade clean

dnf offline-upgrade log

dnf offline-upgrade log --number=<number>

dnf offline-distrosync download [OPTIONS]

dnf offline-distrosync reboot

dnf offline-distrosync reboot --poweroff

dnf offline-distrosync clean

dnf offline-distrosync log

dnf offline-distrosync log --number=<number>

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💅 SUBCOMMANDS 💅

• download — downloads literally everything you need to upgrade to a new major release. all of it. the whole haul. 📦
• reboot — gets the system ready to do the upgrade, then reboots to actually start it. ⚠️ you can only use this after the download command has completed successfully. no shortcuts, bestie.
• clean — removes previously-downloaded data. lowkey it does this by itself at the end of a successful upgrade, so this is for the other situations. 🧹
• log — use this to see a list of boots during which an upgrade was attempted, or to show the logs from an upgrade attempt. wanna see the logs for one specific boot? just specify one of the numbers in the first column. and yes, negative numbers work — they number the boots from last to first. so for example log --number=-1 shows you the logs for the last upgrade attempt. obsessed with that, honestly. 🔥

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• --releasever=VERSION — REQUIRED. the version you're upgrading to. it sets $releasever in all enabled repos. usually it's a number, or rawhide. don't skip this one, she's mandatory.
• --downloaddir=<path> — redirect the download of packages to the <path> you provide. by default, packages get downloaded into (per repository created) subdirectories of /var/lib/dnf/system-upgrade. so that's where they'd normally live, but you can move the party. 🎈
• --distro-sync — behave like dnf distro-sync: always install packages from the new release, even if they're older than the currently-installed version. and heads up — this is the default behavior. she's already on by default, she's that girl.
• --no-downgrade — behave like dnf update: do not install packages from the new release if they're older than what's currently installed. this is the exact opposite of --distro-sync. if you specify both, the last option will be used. also, this one cannot be used with the offline-distrosync command. 🚫
• --poweroff — when you use this with the reboot subcommand, the system will power off after upgrades are completed instead of restarting. bye bye, not a restart, a full power down. 😴
• --number — applied with the log subcommand, this shows the log specified by the number. 🔢

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🧚 NOTES 🧚

dnf system-upgrade reboot does not create a "System Upgrade" boot item. the upgrade will start regardless of which boot item is chosen. so don't go looking for a special menu entry, bestie, there isn't one.

the DNF_SYSTEM_UPGRADE_NO_REBOOT environment variable can be set to a non-empty value to disable the actual reboot performed by system-upgrade (e.g. for testing purposes). super handy if you're just poking at things. 🧪

since this is a DNF plugin, options accepted by dnf are also valid here — such as --allowerasing. see dnf(8) for more information. ✨

and, important: the fedup command is not provided, not even as an alias for dnf system-upgrade. she's gone, she's not coming back as a nickname either. 💀

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😭 BUGS 😭

upgrading from install media (e.g. a DVD or .iso file) currently requires the user to manually set up a DNF repo and fstab entry for the media. yeah. manual. we know. 🫠

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Typical upgrade usage

dnf --refresh upgrade

dnf system-upgrade download --releasever 26

dnf system-upgrade reboot

Show logs from last upgrade attempt

dnf system-upgrade log --number=-1

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🍓 REPORTING BUGS 🍓

bugs should be filed here:

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>

for more info on filing bugs, see the Fedora Project wiki:

<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report>

<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs_and_feature_requests>

please include /var/log/dnf.log and the output of dnf system-upgrade log --number=-1 (if applicable) in your bug reports. help the maintainers help you bestie, it's a group project. 💜

problems with dependency solving during download are best reported to the maintainers of the package(s) with the dependency problems.

similarly, problems you hit on your system after the upgrade completes should be reported to the maintainers of the affected components. in other words: if (for example) KDE stops working, it's best if you report that to the KDE maintainers. route it to the right people, don't just yell into the void. 📣

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

dnf(8), dnf.conf(5), journalctl(1).

Project homepage

<https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf-plugins-core>

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💖 AUTHORS 💖

Will Woods <<wwoods@redhat.com>>

Štěpán Smetana <<ssmetana@redhat.com>>

Author

See AUTHORS in your Core DNF Plugins distribution

Copyright

2014, Red Hat, Licensed under GPLv2+

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this one's from dnf-plugins-core version 4.10.1, dated Sep 27, 2025. go forth and upgrade responsibly. mwah. 💋✨🦋