Bug#489132: upgrade apt/aptitude first

[Giovanni Rapagnani <rapagnani@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:53:12 +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
>I guess many new users are used to synaptic or aptitude. Personaly I
>think we can recommend to use apt-get, but should test upgrades with
>aptitude and synaptic too and solve/describe possible issues with them.

I am trying to collect information for documenting the etch->lenny upgrade using 
aptitude and to document the possible issues.

I have run several upgrades from etch to lenny with aptitude and apt-get. I have 
noted the following things when doing it the simple way i.e. :
  aptitude/apt-get update
  (aptitude/apt-get upgrade)
  aptitude/apt-get dist-upgrade

I wonder if it is worth filling this report against upgrade-reports too ?

Test system: Xen image - i386 - Kernel 2.6.18-6-xen-686

With aptitude
-------------
 Problems
   - (1) several xserver-xorg-video* are removed from the system leaving it
     without graphical interface when the system is concerned with the drivers
     that are removed.
   - (2) aptitude complains about unmet dependency for libvte4 and leave
     libvte-common not upgraded for not breaking the dependency required for
     libvte4. Running a second "aptitude dist-upgrade" will remove libvte4 and
     then upgrade libvte-common. This behavior is not encountered when
     dist-upgrading with apt-get ( Bug#503419 ).
   - (3) on one system (P4 - Intel D845HV - 384MB) gnome-desktop-environment
     was also removed (I will try this week to reproduce the problem and find
     how to deal with it) ( Bug#503296 )

 The following procedure resolved the problems (1) and (2) above :
   (1) aptitude update
   (2) aptitude install apt aptitude dpkg
   (3) aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-all
   (4) aptitude dist-upgrade
   (5) aptitude dist-upgrade

   Remarks : - (5) was necessary for removing libvte4 and upgrading
               libvte-common
             - (4) and (5) can be replaced with : aptitude dist-upgrade libvte4-

With apt-get
------------
 Problems
   - (1) several xserver-xorg-video* are removed from the system leaving it
     without graphical interface when the system is concerned with the drivers
     that are removed.

 The following procedure resolved the problem (1) above :
   (1) aptitude update
   (2) aptitude install apt aptitude dpkg
   (3) aptitude install xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-all
   (4) aptitude dist-upgrade

   Remarks : - in (3) trying to install xserver-xorg-video-all alone was not
               possible because of an unmet dependency for
               xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd that needed xserver-xorg-core
               upgraded.