Re: Attempted upgrade
I did an upgrade on my no. 2 system today. An AMD K5 with 32 MB RAM
running a custom 2.2.14 kernel with SCSI emulation for the CDROM drive.
The system had a /usr partition with about 720 MB installed. It was a
useful test. It was a working system and no longer a stock installation.
I used dpkg 1.4.0.35 and apt 0.3.14 which were on the machine.
First the good news.
The installation system is very robust. I had burnt CD-RWs and the CDROM
drive did not like parts of them. apt-get would exit and it could be
restarted with apt-get -f -u install, and it would carry on where it had
left off. When I finally was forced to burn CD-R disks it was simply a
matter of removing the CD references in /etc/apt/sources.list and running
apt-cdrom add again. This was needed as apt did not recognise the newly
burnt CDs. apt-get picked up where it had left off.
Now the bad news:- the dance of the seven discs.
"..asked to insert specific CD-ROMs at several points during the upgrade
..." At the very least I had to change discs 100 times. Often only one
package would be installed before a change, I was lucky if six packages
installed. At several points apt was confused itself and asked for the
disc that it was already using. Only a madman like myself would persist
to the end. This bug makes upgrading by CD totally impractical.
Now back to some better news.
dpkg exited during the configuration with errors. However, dpkg
--configure -a ran nicely and when it had finished dpkg --audit showed no
problems.
My no.2 machine is available for further upgrade testing. I have 1.3.1,
2.0.0 and 2.1 - I also have an old Infomagic set which I suspect has 1.0.0
Phil.
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Philip Charles; 39a Paterson St., Abbotsford, New Zealand; +64 3 4882818
Mobile 025 267 9420. I sell GNU/Linux CDs. See http://www.copyleft.co.nz
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