Re: slackware,redhat->debian
>>>>> "Douglas" == Douglas L Stewart <douglas@pobox.com> writes:
Douglas> I've got two machines, one slackware 3.0 (I think), and
Douglas> the other is redhat 3.0.3 that I want to move to debian.
Douglas> The problem is that they're too far away and I can't get
Douglas> in front of them in person, so wiping the box and
Douglas> installing from scratch really isn't an option.
Douglas> Does anyone have any suggestions about how I can put on
Douglas> dpkg and slowly install debian packages until I borg borg
Douglas> borg the machines? I assume dpkg is available in
Douglas> something like a .tar.gz that I can compile and put on
Douglas> the boxes, and from there I can just start installing
Douglas> package after package.
Douglas> Anyone have any hints/suggestions for this? I've kept up
Douglas> with Linux and the various distributions for some time,
Douglas> so I know most of the gotchas caused by libc and kernel
Douglas> upgrades already.
Here is what I have done last Sunday. I wanted to upgrade my old
slackware that didn't work any longer since I had installed a new
version of gcc without reading the manual first.
I tried first to use the floppy distribution of Debian. It didn't work
since it requires a fresh partition. I had nothing to backup my hd so
I didn't want to format the partitions. I try insist and to go to
further steps (configurind modules and so on) but all what I managed
to do was beeing anable to boot again.
So, I decided to install a redhat from december infomagic cdrom (the
base system (which brings a 2.0.x kernel) and C and C++ developpement
utilities (so that I could compile a new kernel and dselect needs C++
to be compiled.).
Then I found a debian distribution 1.2.7 from march pht mo'linux. I
took the source of dpkg compile and install it. To be able to do that
I had to comment the part of the makefile which call debiandoc-sgml
(which was not installed).
Then I started to dselect install the base distribution. May be for
first installation following the amount of spare disk you have you
should dselect emacs (which debian puts in /usr/lib/ rather than in
/usr/local/share so that you could have twice the same version of
emacs :
- installation of ldso was ok
- then I went in a circular dependency pb : (libc5 depends on
dpkg which depends on libc5). I quit dselect and try to use dpkg
--force-depends to install dpkg (it needed sysvinit first to have
access to /etc/rc0.d which dkpg needs). Finally I got dpkg.deb
installed but it didn't work (dselect was no longer able to find an
access method, none were available). So I reinstall dpkg from the
source distribution (Now it is recorded as installed so that depencies
works and it is working).
- i went back on dselect and went on installing : libc was ok
... after bash was installed dselect which probably use /bin/sh didn't
work. So I quit dselect and made ldconfig -v and dselect worked
again. But it started installation from beginning. In order to speed
installation up I made dpkg --configure --pending to configure already
unpacked packages and dslect again.
Installation was ok with sometimes need for ld-config or dpkg
--configure.
Then I had to modify /etc/ld.so.conf and /dev/mouse and I had
a slackware system patched with a debian one. I wouldn't dare saying
I'm using a real debian system since I'm not sure that already
existing software might not conflict with new installed debian
software. And it brings to ask a question :
How can I sweep my hd get rid of old files ?
I've already made a perl script based on locate which find
duplicated files (for exemple /usr/bin/emacs and
/usr/local/bin/emacs). The result of my script looks like :
emacs 96/8/6 /usr/bin/emacs
emacs 96/9/28 /usr/local/bin/emacs
Where the date is the date of last modification of files. Now
I need to know the list of files installed by dpkg. Is there a debian
command which could tell this.
Sorry for being so long. Hope this could help.
Gilles
Douglas> -douglas
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