Upgrade Debian 12 to 13 for Dwarfguard 2.0 Last updated: January 23, 2026 15:50

The officially supported Operating System for Dwarfguard version 2.0 and higher is Debian GNU/Linux 13. While Dwarfguard can be installed also on the older version od Debian - 12, it is highly likely that support for that version will be dropped somewhere during the 2.x releases. Because of that, it is highly recommended to perform any new Dwarfguard 2.0 installations on Debian 13.

These instructions are provided for operators and customers that are running Dwarfguard 2 BETA or Dwarfguard 2.0 on Debian 12 to help them to upgrade the Operating System while NOT requiring reinstallation of Dwarfguard.

The instructions are given for a single-deployment server. In case of multi-deployment, contact your service operator or support provider.

1. Upgrade to Dwarfguard 2.0 release

   • In case you are running some BETA version of Dwarfguard 2, please follow the upgrade path:

     • 1.1.0 (2.0 BETA1) -> 1.2.0 (2.0 BETA2) -> 1.3.0 (2.0 BETA3) -> 1.4.3 (2.0 BETA4) -> 2.0,

   • performing all upgrade steps that are needed (it is not possible to skip a step)

2. Stop Dwarfguard

   • Issue following command as root:

     • dwarfg_stop

3. Disable Dwarfguard service from starting after the next boot

   • You need to disable the start using systemctl. First, note the name of your deployment as the exact name of the service depends on the deployment.

     • systemctl disable dwarfg_<your_domain>

   • You can see the exact name by e.g. looking at the install directory under opt like this:

     • ls -d /opt/dwarfg_*

4. Upgrade Debian 12 to Debian 13

   • Follow the instructions given by Debian 13 Release Notes.

   • In summary, you would need to update the APT source list, update the list of packages and perform the system upgrade in one or two steps, potentially rebooting the system as the last step. All of these steps need to be performed by system administrator.

   • Please make sure that you don't accidentally break Dwarfguard settings for:

     • Systemd

     • sudo

     • Apache2

     • MariaDB

     • Cron

5. Trigger Dwarfguard machine package install for Debian 13

   • Now as the Operating System is upgraded, you need to trigger the installation of the packages that are needed for Dwarfguard 2 on Debian 13. You do this by issuing the following command as root:

     • /opt/dwarfg_*/machine_install.sh run

6. (optional) re-run Grafana and Python extension integration

   • In case you do use Grafana integration or SNMP Gateway, you will need to trigger the integration by issuing these commands:

     • for Grafana: dwarfg_grafint

     • for SNMP Gateway: dwarfg_inst_pyext

7. Enable Dwarfguard

   • Once everything is prepared, you should enable automatic start of Dwarfguard after system start:

     • systemctl enable dwarfg_<your_domain>

8. Start Dwarfguard or reboot the system

   • To start the Dwarfguard you may either use the command below or restart the server.

     • dwarfg_start

9. Inspect logs

   • To quickly inspect the Dwarfguard logging system to check for any problem, use the following command:

     • dwarfg_loggrep

   • Seek for the last Dwarfguard start log entry like:

     • --- Dwarfguard DEBUG INIT ---    [Opened at ... ]

   • and see if there are any error messages below that line.