Upgrade Fedora – Software Effect Enterprises, Inc

Upgrading Fedora 41 to Fedora 42

First, open the terminal and run the following command to update your system by getting the latest software packages for current version of Fedora you have installed

$ sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Second, install the special DNF plugin for system upgrade (if you haven’t already).

$ sudo dnf -y install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Now, begin downloading update for Fedora XX and upgrade progress by using the command (where XX is the version you want to upgrade to):

$ sudo dnf -y system-upgrade download --releasever=XX

Once you finish downloading the new version, run the following command to restart your system and get into upgrade action:

$ sudo dnf5 offline reboot

Upgrading the system will take time (for me it took around 20 minutes), so you can now relax, take a walk, and let it finish.

IMPORTANT: I discovered on 2025/06/09 that the upgrade breaks the sendmail link – so programs like mail will give the error message

Cannot start /usr/sbin/sendmail: executable not found (adjust *mta* variable)

To fix: execute:

dnf reinstall postfix

Fedora 35-41