Re: stable-->unstable (or how far to throw the disks?)
On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 07:56:29PM -0800, Bill Moseley wrote:
> At 09:48 AM 02/20/02 -0600, Rob VanFleet wrote:
> >Ok, I am now better informed. It does say alot about the upgrade
> >process that I have not been doing that and have gone through several
> >stable->testing->unstable upgrades without incident.
Wow, you must be very lucky. Do you have X on it or just BASH :)
> Hum, I wish I had better luck. What are you reading that has been
> helping?
There will be "incident" if you upgrade many times. That is why it is
called "testing", or "unstable". "incident" can be dealt with minimum
trouble if you know how.
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/quick-reference/
This may help you.
> I've installed about six times over the last week. Starting with
> Potato CDs, and for about the last three times using floppies. Mostly
> I'm repeating the installation because I ran out of salt to rub in my
> cuts.
Sounds like you may have a bad CD and creating FD from CD.
> I managed to get good diskettes for all except driver-4.
Use IDEPCI image. You may not even use driver disks. :)
> My experience has been poor with the apt-get update / apt-get
> dist-upgrade cycle, even with trying to update apt and dpkg first
> between each step. My best luck as been install base Potato, then use
> dselect to update, selecte (accept defaults) and the Install, and
> repeat for testing and sid. I've managed to get to sid once so far.
> I'm not clear why that's working better.
Before installing, you can go to console by pressing ALT-F2. Then use
editor to edit /etc/sources.list. You can skip most minimum potato
install downloads. That is a small trick.
> That dselect method of upgrading loads quite a few packages. I was
> wishing for a ligher-weight system.
You can unselect it by pressing "_" for large package such as tetex and
emacs. dselect autoselect basic packages.
> I'm trying again right now, but the testing->sid is going slow due to
> sudden slow connection, and, oddly enough, 404 errors on some
> packages. Hum. Maybe there was an update to sid while I was
> downloading.
That happens sometime. Few reasons.
1) Slow ISP to Internet connection.
2) Slow server
Most URL is round robin DNS. So many server at different IP is called
by a same URL and they are randomly chosen through DNS system. So
some host are faster than other.
> It's not a smooth process. For example, I'm mounting to /home
> /dev/hda3 an existing partition. Using the driver disks Potato
> doesn't umount my that partition on first reboot, so I have to wait
> while 60GB is checked. Not to mention how much time it all takes.
Why mount? You can manually umount it. fstab just needed to be
edited.
> I've been trying to understand how to use .deb files between
> installations, with limited luck,
Put them all in /var/cache/apt/archives/ then you are all set,
I think. Try it and tell me what happens.
> and how to avoid using the four driver disks, also with limited
> success. Copying my cached .deb files back to the cache between
> installations hasn't seemed to avoid downloading, but I haven't looked
> that closely.
IDEPCI boot image is your friend.
> Sid finally finished. About 2 1/2 hours from Potato boot disk to Sid.
Well not too bad. :)
--
~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +++++
Osamu Aoki <debian@aokiconsulting.com>, GnuPG-key: 1024D/D5DE453D
Visit Debian reference http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/quick-reference/
There are 6 files: index.{en|fr|it}.html quick-reference.{en|fr|it}.txt
I welcome your constructive criticisms and corrections.
Reply to: