I've been using debian on all my systems for a long time.  On my x86 and x64 systems, debian_version always gets updated after dist-upgrades and upgrades.  It has never been the case for my embedded boards running armbian jessie.  I tried to research into what actually does the trigger, but I can't find any details.

 

When I log in, my splashscreen confirms there are no new updates (I updated this morning).  It's still showing 8.0 in /etc/debian_version.  I expect to see /etc/debian_version reflect 8.4

 

Any ideas?

 

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

Calculating upgrade... The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:

  icedtea-netx-common libavcodec57 libavdevice57 libavfilter6 libavformat57 libavresample3 libavutil55 libchromaprint1 libdirac-encoder0 libflite1 libgme0 libmodplug1 libopencv-core2.3

  libopencv-imgproc2.3 libopenjp2-7 libopenjpeg2 libpgm-5.1-0 libpostproc52 libpostproc54 librtmp0 librubberband2 libshine3 libsnappy1 libsodium13 libsoxr0 libssh-gcrypt-4 libswresample2

  libswscale4 libsystemd-login0 libunique-1.0-0 libva-drm1 libva-x11-1 libva1 libx264-123 libx265-87 libzmq3 ssl-cert

Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

Done

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

 

sudo apt-get upgrade

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

Calculating upgrade... The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:

  icedtea-netx-common libavcodec57 libavdevice57 libavfilter6 libavformat57 libavresample3 libavutil55 libchromaprint1 libdirac-encoder0 libflite1 libgme0 libmodplug1 libopencv-core2.3

  libopencv-imgproc2.3 libopenjp2-7 libopenjpeg2 libpgm-5.1-0 libpostproc52 libpostproc54 librtmp0 librubberband2 libshine3 libsnappy1 libsodium13 libsoxr0 libssh-gcrypt-4 libswresample2

  libswscale4 libsystemd-login0 libunique-1.0-0 libva-drm1 libva-x11-1 libva1 libx264-123 libx265-87 libzmq3 ssl-cert

Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

Done

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

 

cat /etc/debian_version 

8.0

 

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://http.debian.net/debianjessie main contrib non-free

deb http://http.debian.net/debianjessie-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.orgjessie/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://www.deb-multimedia.orgjessie main non-free

 

 

$ dpkg -S /etc/debian_version
base-files: /etc/debian_version

Looks like debian_version gets updated when the package "base-files" is updated.

$ dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' '*' | grep debian_version
 /etc/debian_version 901275afdd9278ae23c429033a63d04e

$ md5sum /etc/debian_version 
901275afdd9278ae23c429033a63d04e  /etc/debian_version

At least on my system no other script touched that file.

$ dpkg -S /etc/debian_version
base-files: /etc/debian_version

Looks like debian_version gets updated when the package "base-files" is updated.

$ dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' '*' | grep debian_version
 /etc/debian_version 901275afdd9278ae23c429033a63d04e

$ md5sum /etc/debian_version 
901275afdd9278ae23c429033a63d04e  /etc/debian_version

At least on my system no other script touched that file.

 

 

Thank you, this post was very helpful.

 

I did a apt-cache show base-files and it showed there were two versions with the on for 8 taking precedence over 8+deb8u7.  So I ran  apt-get install base-files=8+deb8u7

 

I'll check through and see what other packages this is happening.