Indeed dist-upgrade should be used - it isn't just kernel updates either. The server should also be rebooted. Applying kernel updates makes no good if you neve

Indeed dist-upgrade should be used - it isn't just kernel updates either. The server should also be rebooted. Applying kernel updates makes no good if you never apply them! screen -x is equivalent to screen -xR afaict:) I'd also add @reboot screen to crontab, which will recreate a session on startup - in my bashrc I have : if [ "a$STY" == "a" ]; then screen -x fi Other useful things include actually setting up backups (duplicity is a useful first step here), installing munin/nagios to monitor the new box. Realistically if you are doing this more than once per blue moon, then you should be using something like puppet to do this automagically.