Re: Upgrading to Etch
>Subject: Re: Upgrading to Etch
>From: Jim Popovitch <jimpop[-@]yahoo.com>
>To: cls[-@]truffula.sj.ca.us
>Cc: debian-isp <debian-isp[-@]lists.debian.org>
>References: <88u2T-1Pp-25@gated-at.bofh.it> <88uFJ-2El-33@gated-at.bofh.it>
> <slrnf1nv83.pa7.spambait@truffula.sj.ca.us>
>Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:59:21 -0400
>On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 14:09 -0700, cls@truffula.sj.ca.us wrote:
>> There's a little more to it. Between sarge and etch
>> we replace devfs with udev. You need to install udev and hal
>> while still on sarge. You need to install an etch
>> linux-image and make an initrd.img with the new tools.
>> If you do it in the wrong order your system is unbootable.
>> No fun if it's far away in colocation.
>I don't have hal or udev on my colocated servers, and I was able to test
>an upgrade to Etch without adding them. Additionally the dist-upgrade
>didn't add them and the test server survived fine. What makes you think
>that udev and hal are required?
Etch Release notes "Things to do before rebooting" section
4.7.1 "Converting from devfs." I upgraded a test machine last
month without reading the release notes. It wouldn't boot
after that. Kernel panic, no file system on /dev/hda1, no
/sbin/init found. (Man, would that have been a show stopper
for a newbie.) I booted Knoppix on it, mounted /, /usr,
/var, and /proc appropriately, chrooted to the root
of the test Debian sarge/etch, and installed hal and udev
with apt-get. Then reinstalled linux-image to get it
to generate a new initrd.img. (And ran grub-update,
which probably isn't needed, a habit left over from Lilo.)
This repair caused the machine to boot correctly.
I upgraded my main workstation yesterday, and made the same
mistake, and fixed it the same way. Sarge used devfs.
Etch doesn't. Perhaps there is a way to get a Sarge
box that doesn't use devfs. Dist-upgrade from woody?
These had been fresh sarge installs. I've been using
GNU+X+Linux since Softlanding Linux Systems, and always had a
simple, static /dev/ directory. Sarge used devfs when I
installed it, and I figured the Debian maintainers knew
what they were doing and didn't look into whether
it was possible to do without it.
BTW the only other problems were the xserver-xorg-core
installer chose the wrong video driver for my ATI Rage 128
card. It chose "i128" but the right answer would have
been "ati" which automatically pulls in "r128" on its own.
("i128" is for a Number Nine card.)
And sound no longer works. But sound has always taken
some fiddling around. Etch hasn't loaded any alsa
drivers, and I haven't gotten around to figuring out why.
Cameron
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