Upgrade a Fedora WSL Instance

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Thanks to Jonathon Bowman for this solution.

Here is how to upgrade in place a Fedora WSL instance using the DNF tools. This method overcomes the problem of not being able to reboot a WSL instance. Note the use of an environment variable to specify no reboot.

Clean Up and Backup

Optional steps.

From the Fedora command line.

sudo dnf clean all

Then from a powershell make a backup of the instance to a temporary file.

wsl --export fedora $HOME\Downloads\fedora-wsl.tar

Perform the Upgrade

Replace “xx” with whatever the next release number is, e.g. “41”.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=xx
export DNF_SYSTEM_UPGRADE_NO_REBOOT=1
sudo -E dnf system-upgrade reboot
sudo -E dnf system-upgrade upgrade
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Restore From Backup

Only if it all goes wrong! You can also create a separate instance by choosing a new WSL instance name.

mkdir C:\distros\freshfedora
wsl --import Fresh-Fedora C:\distros\freshfedora $HOME\Downloads\fedora-wsl.tar

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