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Re: Bug#396331: upgrade-reports: sarge to etch removes kernels



Argh.  Sorry, this was of course supposed to go to
debian-release@LISTS.debian.org ...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Bug#396331: upgrade-reports: sarge to etch removes kernels
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:57:25 -0800
From: Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu>
To: 396331@bugs.debian.org
CC: 396331-submitter@bugs.debian.org,  debian-release@bugs.debian.org,
dburrows@debian.org
References: <20061031085500.3955.32671.reportbug@localhost.localdomain>

Ryan Finnie wrote:

> Package: upgrade-reports
> Severity: important
> 
> Upgrade went well, except for one rather big problem.  If I do a 
> straight "aptitude -f dist-upgrade", it removes kernel-image-* (IE, 
> kernel-image-2.6.8-3-686; I didn't try a 2.4 installation->upgrade).  
> Now, I understand why older kernels must be removed for etch (udev, 
> etc), but this is probably a problem for the average user.  For the 
> release notes, I would recommend the following procedure:
> 
> 1. Edit sources.list
> 2. apt-get update
> 3. aptitude -f install linux-image-2.6-[arch]
> 4. dpkg --purge hotplug
> 5. reboot
> 6. aptitude -f dist-upgrade
> 
> Installing the new kernel first means the old kernels will be removed, 
> udev will be installed, only a few necessary packages are upgraded 
> (libc6, etc), and a new, hopefully working kernel is installed in its 
> place.  The user can then reboot and verify the new kernel works before 
> completely upgrading to etch.  Of course, if the new kernel DOESN'T 
> work, the user doesn't have anything to fall back on, but at least he 
> knows early on.

This problem (automatic removal of old kernel packages) is apparently
fixed in the version of aptitude in Sid, 0.4.4-1.  If this version was
allowed to pass into Etch (currently aptitude in Etch is only one
version behind Sid, at 0.4.3-1), then the release notes would only have
to say something to the effect of "Install the aptitude from Etch
*before* dist-upgrading."  (The Sarge release notes contained a similar
instruction, BTW.)

CC'ed to debian-release and aptitude maintainer for their consideration.

best regards,

-- 
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu>   Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/    Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751                 Princeton, NJ 08544



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