How to Upgrade openSUSE Leap from 15.2 to 15.3

openSUSE Leap is a free and Linux-based operating system for your PC, Laptop or Server. It’s one of the stable Linux distribution forked from SUSE Enterprise Linux, which is used by millions of users worldwide for their day to day operation and i’m part of that.

It has been my primary OS since openSUSE Leap 15.1. openSUSE 15.3 is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3 and it is supported until December 2022.

OpenSUSE offers two variants for users:

  • openSUSE Leap – It’s the long-term support (LTS)
  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – It’s the tested-rolling-release distribution.

Prerequisites:

  • Make sure you have a backup of important data or applications. This allows you to restore the data if something goes wrong during the upgrade activity.
  • Don’t perform the upgrade directly from openSUSE Leap 15.1 to Leap 15.3, which is not recommended. Instead, from 15.1 upgrade to 15.2, and only then from 15.2 to upgrade to 15.3.
  • Disable all third repositories and perform the upgrade, then re-enable them.

Updating openSUSE Leap 15.2 packages

Making sure you are up to date. To update all existing packages, run:

To refresh a repository, run:

$ sudo zypper ref

Update installed current packages with newer versions, run:

$ sudo zypper up

When all updates are complete, restart the system for the changes to take effect.

$ sudo reboot

Make sure your system is fully updated with openSUSE Leap 15.2 packages. To check current openSUSE Leap version, run:

$ cat /etc/*-release

LSB_VERSION="core-2.0-noarch:core-3.2-noarch:core-4.0-noarch:core-2.0-x86_64:core-3.2-x86_64:core-4.0-x86_64"
NAME="openSUSE Leap"
VERSION="15.2"
ID="opensuse-leap"
ID_LIKE="suse opensuse"
VERSION_ID="15.2"
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE Leap 15.2"
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:opensuse:leap:15.2"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.opensuse.org"
HOME_URL="https://www.opensuse.org/"

Enabling Update repository:

Run the following command to check if the update repository already exists and is enabled.

$ zypper repos --uri | grep -i update

If you find that both were already enabled on your system, go to the next step.

If the ‘Enabled’ column says ‘No’, enable it by issuing the below command:

$ zypper modifyrepo --enable repo-update

Updating the repositories:

Check if your Leap repos defined in ‘/etc/zypp/repos.d/’ are using the ‘$releasever’ variable already using the following command.

$ cat /etc/zypp/repos.d/*.repo

In most cases it should already have the ‘$releasever’ variable. If they are still hard-coded with a particular Leap version number, then run the following command to modify them.

$ sudo sed -i 's/15.2/${releasever}/g' /etc/zypp/repos.d/*.repo

To refresh the openSUSE Leap 15.3 repositories, run:

$ sudo zypper --releasever=15.3 refresh

To perform the full distribution upgrade, run: This command will download all openSUSE 15.3 packages in advance, after which the update will only begin. Once the update is finished, openSUSE sets the ‘releasever’ variable to the new version.

$ zypper --releasever=15.3 dup --download-in-advance

During the upgrade process, you will be prompted twice for your confirmation to continue the upgrade process. It summarizes a list of packages that need to be upgraded, downgraded, and installed.

After that, it prompts you to ‘Agree to the Terms and License’.

Do you agree with the terms of the license? [yes/no] (no): yes

After the upgrade, a reboot is mandatory in order to boot the system with the new kernel.

$ sudo reboot

Verifying the upgrade:

$ cat /etc/os-release

Closing Notes

In this guide, we’ve shown you how to upgrade from openSUSE Leap 15.2 to openSUSE Leap 15.3 with steps.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment below.

About Magesh Maruthamuthu

Love to play with all Linux distribution

View all posts by Magesh Maruthamuthu

3 Comments on “How to Upgrade openSUSE Leap from 15.2 to 15.3”

  1. Hello thanks for the guide, really helps!

    I would add at the end this extra step after the upgrade and reboot of the box:

    # Refresh package repo
    zypper refresh
    # Apply securty patch
    zypper patch
    # Update package
    zypper update
    # Clean zypper downloaded packages
    zypper clean
    reboot

  2. Many thanks for this article. It worked perfectly. I’ve seen and tried other articles for this upgrade, including on the opensuse website which have left me perplexed in the least. Well done!

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