How to upgrade coreutils from 8.21 to 8.24 in Linux Ubuntu 14.04?

Solution 1:

You can download, compile and install coreutils into a user defined directory for non system use.

Running as root, I used the following commands to install version 8.27 to /root/coreutils

cd /root
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.27.tar.xz && tar xf coreutils-8.27.tar.xz
export FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1
cd /root/coreutils-8.27 && ./configure \
        --prefix=/root/coreutils            \
        --libexecdir=/root/coreutils/lib    \
        --enable-no-install-program=kill,uptime && make && make install

You can then run the command using the absolute path of the installed binaries.

 $ /root/coreutils/bin/dd

Update the wget url to use the version you desire. You can find coreutil releases here http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/