Re: trial upgrade of base system
Bill Mitchell writes ("trial upgrade of base system"):
> I downloaded new packages today, and tried "dpkg --install *.deb"
> for the base packages on top of my working system (a hodgepodge
> of 0.93R6 and 1.1). Is this the sort of thing which users upgrading
> a 0.93R6 installation or a hodgepodge installation such as mine
> can expect to see? If so, they'll probably need a cribsheet to
> help them deal with some of this.
No, this is not what they'll have to cope with. For starters, dselect
will invoke dpkg with options that provide for smoother upgrades (dpkg
-GOEB --install --recursive, for the curious).
...
> Preparing to replace ldso (using ldso.deb) ...
>
> You are using the binfmt_elf module to support ELF binaries. This will
> not work because the system programs required to load the modules will
> themselves be ELF binaries.
>
> [ "This will not work." Scarey message.
> I was running a kernal from image-1.2.13-7, but I also had binfmt_elf
> listed in /etc/modules. That kernel has elf support built in, and I
> needed to remove the spurious mention of binfmt-elf from /etc/modules.
> That's a naive user error during debian install.
> Would a naive know what to do about this message?
> Perhaps it'd be better to advise that the kernel must be compiled
> with elf support built in, and that /etc/modules should not mention
> binfmt/elf.
> ]
This would appear to be a bug in the kernel module - surely it should
not allow itself to be loaded if ELF support is already present ?
If this were the case then (a) people would see an error message and
hopefully take it out of /etc/modules and (b) even if they didn't it
wouldn't appear in /proc/modules and the ld.so preinst would be happy.
> dpkg: regarding libc5.deb containing libc5, pre-dependency problem:
> libc5 pre-depends on ldso (>=1.7.14-2)
> ldso is installed, but is version 1.7.14-2.
dselect will handle predependencies. If you don't use dselect you
have to figure out the order to feed the packages to dpkg yourself.
> Saving GMT setting from /etc/init.d/boot ..
>
> Dpkg might ask you if you want the new configuration files in /etc/init.d.
> This is generally a good idea, unless you have really changed any of these
> files. The GMT setting in /etc/init.d/boot will be saved anyway.
>
> [ is this what the error message was intended to say?
> perhaps "really changed" was meant to say "not changed"?
> ]
I think this message is fine. It probably means that the postinst
script has modified the conffile and that dpkg may prompt for it.
This kind of problem, BTW, is why it's usually a bad idea to mix
dpkg-handled and postinst-handled configuration in the same file.
Ian.
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