* Patrick Dahiroc <pdahiroc@yahoo.com> wrote:
after simulating an apt-get dist-upgrade to woody/testing. apt-get issued the following warning: WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing! sysvinit util-linux (due to sysvinit) are these warnings benign? are these packages no longer needed woody? please adivse. thanks patrick
These two packages are necessary, however I suspect the "Warning" is a benign artifact. The "testing" version(s) have a higher (different) number than the same packages in "stable", hence they are probably in the list of packages that are to be "upgraded". I suspect what you are seeing is only half of the total action that will be accomplished during the upgrade on these packages. In some cases the changes between package versions is fairly significant, and requires removal of the old package before installing the new one. I am fairly confident that the package maintainers who created this process "..know exactly what you are doing"...<grin>. I have used this method to upgrade about 4-5 machines here, and I have yet to have it leave me with a system missing these packages!
If you want to really check it out, do the "apt-get dist-upgrade" and look over the list of packages and the proposed actions at the front end of the process. It will stop and ask you if you want to proceed. This is a good time to review the list of proposed changes. I will bet that both sysvinit and util-linux are on the "upgrade" list.
Cheers, -Don Spoon-