Woody(2.4.21) Sarge(2.6x)

[James <james@buffer.net>]

Hello,

I already have a portable(Prostar 8880 
x86) running woody (stable) with several 
kernel options, the latest being 2.4.21.

If I want to upgrade to Sarge(testing)
and a 2.6.x kernel, do I upgrade the
kernel first, to a 2.6.x kernel and test
it as another kernel option under lilo,
with Woody first?  Or do I upgrade the 
distro from stable to testing, first, 
and then work  on a 2.6.x  kernel 
upgrade/build?

 I suspect that the main issue is going 
to be with module loading. Kernels 
previous to 2.6 used (as you probably 
know) the modutils program to handle 
module-loading. But 2.6 series kernels
require a new program called 
module-init-tools. So you'll need to
upgrade enough at least to get that 
(it's packaged for Debian). I don't 
think that's in stable; so you have to 
either upgrade to testing, or else use a 
backported package for stable.

So if I use 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to 
upgrade the distro to testing, first, 
then  would the dist-upgrade take care 
of the modutils versus module-init-tools 
issues?

This seems to be the simplest method to 
upgrade from stable to testing on a 
portable. All I have to do is add these 
lines to my /etc/apt/sources.list file

<quote>

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib
deb-src 
http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib
deb-src 
http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib

deb ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib
deb-src ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib
deb-src 
http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing 
main  contrib
deb-src ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib

deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib
deb-src ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ 
testing main  contrib

deb http://debian.rutgers.edu/ testing 
main  contrib
deb-src http://debian.rutgers.edu/ 
testing main  contrib

deb ftp://debian.rutgers.edu/pub/ 
testing main  contrib
deb-src ftp://debian.rutgers.edu/pub/ 
testing main  contrib
<end/quote>

and then comment out the old lines, then 
issue 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.

Note, I lifted these 
/etc/apt/sources.list file from a Sarge
installation using Debian-Installer. 
Maybe somebody has a better source for 
the /etc/apt/sources.list entries?

 Ideas and comments are most welcome....

James