Automatic upgrade seemingly not working

Help
1

Although

{system.autoUpgrade.enable = true;system.autoUpgrade.allowReboot = true;}

sudo nix-channel --list nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-25.05

is obtained. I was expecting “25.11”. Any ideas? Thanks.

2

You need to manually change the channel version if there is a NixOS release.

That’s the point of stable releases, to not magically update you across breaking boundaries. It’d be pretty catastrophic if it worked otherwise.

Read the release notes, and when you’re sure that nothing important will break after the update, change your channel:

sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-25.11 nixos

After that you can either forcibly re-run the upgrade service or do a manual nixos-rebuild boot and reboot. You’ll want to reboot since this will include kernel upgrades.

3 Likes
3

When following these instructions closely, then

[@nixos:~]$ sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-25.11 nixos

[@nixos:~]$ sudo nix-channel --list

nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-25.11

[@nixos:~]$ sudo nixos-rebuild bootbuilding Nix…building the system configuration…Done. The new configuration is /nix/store/d2a6f3mkblp3zn951vninrakpcqqn7ym-nixos-system-nixos-25.05.813260.6c8f0cca8451

it is still building for 25.05.

4

You have a choice of either

sudo nix-channel --upgrade

or

reboot AND wait for the automatic upgrade service to run.

1 Like
5

–-update works just fine!

1 Like
6

Other than that, seamless update - good work! :slight_smile:

7

I an nutshell

sudo nix-channel --add ``https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-25.11`` nixos
sudo nix-channel --update
sudo nixos-rebuild boot

worked for me.

Just a proposal: the official instructions may have more concise instructions added as it is just three commands.

1 Like