Problems installing/upgrading potato

[Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au>]

Problems when upgrading computer, by hand with apt-get install:

debconf requires perl-5.005 to be installed, but this package
wasn't installed. This prevented packages that require debconf
to work install. It also prevented preconfiguration to work
properly. I have filled a bug against debconf, but I am not sure if
this is correct or not.

Also:
apt-get dist-upgrade refuses to upgrade kbd, unless manually
specified (ie apt-get install kbd).


-------------------------------------------

Problems when installing potato from scratch (another computer):

installation routine gave me an option to "reboot computer".
I have two partitions mounted (via the online dialogs):
/home
/

however, the boot disk didn't umount /, so a check was forced on my
next reboot. I consider this to be a serious problem (ie
could result in loss of data)...

Also, recently I keep getting messages on startup like:

insmod: Note: /etc/modules.conf is more recent than /lib/modules/2.2.13/modules.dep

(this was on my first boot, before / is mounted read-write)

and

insmod: /lib/modules/2.2.13/misc/unix.o: cannot create /var/log/ksymoops/2000118004326.ksyms Read-only file system

(I thought this was specific to my diskless boot system, now I guess I was
wrong)

and

Calculating module dependencies... depmod: error reading ELF header:
No such file or directory.

????  Actually I suspect this isn't as bad as it seems. Maybe some
invalid file found its way into /lib/modules, and is being ignored.

Also:

the installation disk wouldn't let me select my download location
before asking me to select my tasks :-( (this is after it downloads
the complete package list).

The sample /etc/apt/sources.list lists stable, using the old format
for non-US, and doesn't use mirrors that are close to me..

On the topic of non-english language support (not that I understand
anything other then english <grin>), task-japanese wouldn't install
because a required package couldn't be found (can't remember not which
one), and doc-linux-zh-s has an error in the control file, so cannout
be configured.

I don't have time to file bug reports right now (besides - it isn't
configured yet), so I will just put everything here, and refer to it
later.

xf86config messed up and put '(null)' instead of the vertical refresh
rate (which I entered manually) into XF86Config.

man wasn't installed by default????? Perhaps this is a side affect
of not doing the initial part properly.

Selecting all of the task-gnome packages didn't install a window
manager. Maybe this was expected, I am not sure.

emacs19 was installed instead of emacs20 or xemacs20. I has told
emacs19 is now obsolete.

Lots of warnings compiling *.el files, eg reference to free variable,
bound but not referenced, obsolete variable, functions that are known
but not defined.
 
-- 
Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au>