Bug#310005: [zobel@ftbfs.de: Bug#310005: no aptitude on mips/mipsel on Woody, upgrade kernels needed.]

[Thiemo Seufer <ths@networkno.de>]

retitle 310005 Better documentation needed for mips/mipsel upgrades
severity 310005 important
thanks

> ----- Forwarded message from Martin Zobel-Helas <zobel@ftbfs.de> -----
[snip]
> Archive date: Thu May 19 19:00:01 UTC 2005 
> Upgrade date: Sat May 21 04:17:36 CEST 2005
> uname -a: Linux signy 2.4.16 #1 Sun Dec 16 16:38:44 CET 2001 mips unknown

JFTR, 2.4.16 is AFAICS the kernel from bootfloppies, 2.4.19 is the
latest available in woody.

[snip]
> - Did any packages fail to upgrade?
> yes, libc6. needs newer kernel.

The sarge kernel is good enough for that.

[snip]
> doing upgrade tests here, and doing it from what the release notes say,
> i just discovered that there is _NO_ aptitude in woody for mips/mipsel.
>
> So documentation MUST mention to first install aptitude from sarge (and
> it's depends) before doing the rest of the upgrade with aptitude.

This isn't going to work (as you discovered) because the kernel update
must happen first. The steps I recommend for mips/mipsel are:

- (SGI ip22 only:) Install arcboot from woody and make sure it correctly
  installed to boot the system, i.e. that the firmware variables point
  to arcboot instead of the kernel in the volume header.
- Fetch the sarge 2.4.27 kernel and install it via dpkg -i. It will
  complain about module mismatches (from modutils) and ask if the
  installation should continue, with a default of NO. Say YES here,
  the modules are not used for basic system operation needed for an
  upgrade.
- Reboot the system.
- Change sources.list to point to sarge.
- apt-get update; apt-get install aptitude

>From here on, upgrading should follow the procedure for other
architectures.


Thiemo