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