I'm currently running Debian 9.0 (stretch) which I upgraded from jessie. I upgraded long time ago and don't remember if I did a stable upgrade or I went to unstable instead. I want to move to stretch stable but I can't figure out how to check if I'm on stable.
also if I happen to be on stretch unstable is it possible to move to stable stretch?
Try lsb_release -a
guiverc@755-deb:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux buster/sid
Release: testing
Codename: buster
You'll note my debian is a 'testing' release, and thus not stable. Debian 9 (stretch) is the current stable release of debian.
The current stable distribution of Debian is version 9, codenamed stretch. It was initially released as version 9 on June 17th, 2017 and its latest update, version 9.8, was released on February 16th, 2019. https://www.debian.org/releases/
On another box I get
guiverc@de2900:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 8.11 (jessie)
Release: 8.11
Codename: jessie
The 8.11 shows it's a stable release (could also be called an old-stable).
sudo apt dist-upgrade ('upgrade' doesn't allow all upgrades to occur having restrictions requiring 'dist-upgrade' or 'full-upgrade'). Your answer replied a number release, so it is a stable release (just an outdated stretch as I see it).
– guiverc
Mar 2 at 4:33
cat /etc/os-releases? – Biswapriyo Mar 2 at 8:36