Bug#406131: release-notes: Document how to do partial updates for users tight on space?
Hi Javi,
On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 01:18:13AM +0100, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña wrote:
>
> Package: release-notes
> Severity: normal
>
> Currently the release notes has a section related to how to check if you have
> sufficient space to upgrade the system (with tips telling users how to make
> up space if needed). However, there are some situations in which the user's
> system might be tight on space and they need information on how to do
> *partial* upgrades.
>
> I have currently faced this situation in my laptop (which has *only* 4GB of
> space dedicated to a Debian installation [1]) and I've had to make an upgrade
> from an ancient etch to a recent etch, so it might be considered a
> very large "upgrade" (I still had Xfree86, for example and had yet to make
> the move to Xorg). It had to download ~690MB of packages to do the upgrade
> and the system only has ~300MB free.
>
> Unfortunately, apt/aptitude happily chews on all the available disk space (and
> more) if you just say "Go ahead!" to an upgrade which you cannot fully
> download to disk (and it is not intelligent enough to remove packages from
> the cache if space is needed)
>
> There's no indication on what steps should be taken to upgrade the system
> under these conditions. I guess one mechanism would be to do partial upgrades
> like this:
>
- I suugest to upgrade aptitude first
> - upgrade only 'important' or 'standard' packages
This is easy with aptitude. Really, it should be
- upgrade only 'required' 'important' 'standard' packages
limit by pressing 'l' and input !~v(~pextra|~poptional)
keep with : for hold this time
upgrade by pressing 'U" and 'g' (untested but ...)
(You can do this in much finer steps.)
> - clean the package cache
fro memu ...
> - upgrade the X window system
maybe hold (:) package in task list for desktop here is enough.
> - clean the package cache
> - upgrade the desktop environment
> - clean the package cache
> - dist-upgrade the rest of the system
Just do U g
>
> Can we document this kind of suggestions?
aptitude (even sarge one has very powerful regrex functionality. The
user manual is a bit dificult so I reorganized that explanation in wiki
page at http://wiki.debian.org/DRAptitude . With this table, it is easy
to make all kinds of selective actions :-)
> Or should we just tell the user in
> this situation (i.e. to those which the documented tips are insufficient) to
> a) run 'apt-get dist-upgrade' (would fail when the disk is
> full) and 'apt-get clean' again and again until the system is upgrade
>
> or
>
> b) get hold of a temporary location (either through NFS or through an USB
> hard disk) and make /var/cache/apt/ point there during the upgrade
>
> or
>
> c) use an NFS-mounted mirror repository for the upgrade (that would prevent
> them being copied over to the local system and reduce disk space needs,
> right?)
>
> Ideas?
How about this.
0. Purge totally useless removed configuration files.
1. Remove (not purge) desktop and X.
.. clear cache
2. Upgrade.
.. clear cache
3. Install X
.. clear cache
4. Install desktop selectively from the aptitude task list.
.. clear cache
Since removing helps all the funny upgrade confuision and disk space
issues together, this should be easier. You can always find removed
package by ~c in flat view of aptitude.
Osamu
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