Sprite Maintenance

Sprites are persistent. Everything you leave is there when you come back, including the software. Long-living Sprites still need regular updates. This guide walks through some of the common tasks for maintaining the software environment in your Sprite.

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OS Upgrades

New Sprites run on a fresh install of Ubuntu 25.10. Older Sprites created with Ubuntu 25.04 must upgrade to continue receiving security and feature updates.

If you don’t know what version of Ubuntu your Sprite currently runs, check with:

lsb_release -d

Fortunately, Sprites are disposable. If your workload doesn’t require the Sprite to live long-term, upgrading is easy: destroy the Sprite and create a new one! If you need to copy files over, try mounting the filesystem locally.

If creating a new Sprite is impractical, you can also upgrade Ubuntu in-place. Keep in mind that bundled software (such as agents and language toolchains) must be upgraded separately. Install the Ubuntu upgrader with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ubuntu-release-upgrader-core

With the upgrader installed, follow the official instructions from Ubuntu. In short:

# upgrade to the latest packages for the current release
sudo apt upgrade

# switch to the new release
sudo do-release-upgrade

# upgrade installed packages to the new release
sudo apt upgrade