Updating OpenMediaVault

(Note: this is part of my ongoing series on cheaply selfhosting)

I’ve been using OpenMediaVault 6 on a cheap mini-PC as a home server for over a year. Earlier this year, OpenMediaVault 7 was announced which upgrades the underlying Linux to Debian 12 Bookworm and made a number of other security, compatibility, and user interface improvements.

Not wanting to start over fresh, I decided to take advantage of OpenMediaVault’s built-in command line tool to handle upgrades and, if like me, you are looking for a quick and clean way of upgrading from OpenMediaVault 6 to OpenMediaVault 7, look no further:

1. SSH into your system / connect directly with a keyboard and monitor. While normally I would recommend WeTTY (accessible via [Services > WeTTY] from the web console interface) to handle any command line activity on your server, because WeTTY relies on the server to be running and updating the operating system necessitates shutting the server down, you’ll need to either plug in a keyboard and monitor or use SSH.
2. Run sudo omv-upgrade in the command-line. This will start a long process of downloading and installing necessary files to complete the operating system update. From time to time you’ll be asked to accept / approve a set of changes via keyboard. If you’re on the online administrative panel, you’ll be booted off as the server shuts down.
3. Restart the server. Once everything is complete, you’ll need to restart the server to make sure everything “takes”. This can be done by running reboot in the command line or by manually turning off and on the server.

Assuming everything went smoothly, after the server completes its reboot (which will take a little bit of extra time after an operating system upgrade), upon logging into the administrative console as you had done before, you’ll be greeted by the new OMV 7 login screen. Congratulations!