Rpi-update

[castalla]

Can somebody explain when and why it's appropriate to run rpi-update?

[dom]

rpi-update gets you the latest experimental firmware. It is usually fine, but occasionally may have regressions.
You should run rpi-update regularly if you want to help with testing, and are happy to encounter bugs and submit bug reports.
You might want want to run rpi-udpate if you are having a specific issue that a forum post, or commit messages on guithub suggests has been recently fixed.

The changes from rpi-updates will appear with an apt-get update eventually, if there are no reports of regressions from the rpi-update testers. Most users should just use this.

[Montala]

Thanks 'dom' but could I just clarify one point please... if I run rpi-update, is there any point in 'running' apt-get update and apt-get upgrade afterwards, or will rpi-upgrade already have downloaded and installed all the latest updates etc for me?

Thanks!

[dom]

Thanks 'dom' but could I just clarify one point please... if I run rpi-update, is there any point in 'running' apt-get update and apt-get upgrade afterwards, or will rpi-upgrade already have downloaded and installed all the latest updates etc for me?

Thanks!

"apt-get upgrade" is a standard linux command that updates your debian distribution. So if there are bug fixes in software packages that have been installed with "apt-get install" (or any of the initially installed packages), this will update them.
rpi-update only updates the raspberry pi specific files ("the firmware", or files in /boot, /opt/vc, and /lib/modules).

So if you want the very latest of everything, you run both rpi-update and apt-get update && apt-get upgrade.

[Montala]

Thank you for such a prompt and helpful reply.

I had in fact being doing exactly that, but I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't duplicating anything.

[castalla]

Very useful - thanks.

[ComputerJock]

rpi-update gets you the latest experimental firmware. It is usually fine, but occasionally may have regressions.
You should run rpi-update regularly if you want to help with testing, and are happy to encounter bugs and submit bug reports.
You might want want to run rpi-udpate if you are having a specific issue that a forum post, or commit messages on guithub suggests has been recently fixed.

The changes from rpi-updates will appear with an apt-get update eventually, if there are no reports of regressions from the rpi-update testers. Most users should just use this.

I've just done the rpi-update and have sound issues. aplay will no longer play sound -- or at least I can't hear it. amixer/alsamixer terminate with errors. hello_audio does work tho.

So, for a complete beginner, where should this error be reported. You mentioned "gethub". Can you provide a url? Thank you.

[ComputerJock]

I've just done the rpi-update and have sound issues. aplay will no longer play sound -- or at least I can't hear it. amixer/alsamixer terminate with errors. hello_audio does work tho.

So, for a complete beginner, where should this error be reported. You mentioned "gethub". Can you provide a url? Thank you.

Update: Very sorry... False alarm... I finally figured out that I had to do alsamixer -c 0 and I discovered that it was set to mute after my rpi-update. Apologies to all.

[KingToAD]

hi, I'm new to all this but I have the original raspbian image on my sd card. By using the update and upgrade commands will this update it to the new image (july's one) or do i need to format the sd card and start again?