Re: How do I find out what version of ebian is on a machine?
I am cc-ing this back to debian-user because it contains information which
will be useful to anyone considering an upgrade to hamm.
On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Stan Brown wrote:
> >On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Stan Brown wrote:
> >
> >> All ths talk of libc5 to libc6 upgrades gotme thnking about upgarding.
> >> Since it matters at this point in time for upgradeing, how do I
> >> determine what version of Debian is on a given machine?
> >
> > cat /etc/debian_version
>
> great information. So since mne reports 1.2 what is the "name" of the
> version on my box? Since most people on this list only talk names, not
> numbers.
debian 1.2 was code-named "rex".
> And how hard is it going to be to upgrade this toe 2.0 ( hamm?).
i have sucessfully run my autoupgrade script on a rex system...well,
a system which was built as rex and upgraded out of "bo" while bo was
still the "unstable" version. so the system was somewhere between rex
and bo.
Robert Hilliard is working on my script so that it fully supports an
upgrade from rex. i think he said that he expects to have that done
within a few days. when it's ready, he'll probably post his updated
version to either debian-user or debian-devel or both.
However, the script only does the potentially dangerous bits of the
upgrade. i.e. libc6, libncurses, libreadline, bash and several other
packages. if these packages are installed in the wrong order, then the
system is likely to be extremely broken (bash wont work any more which
makes it hard to fix). The script DOES successfully do that part of the
upgrade.
After it has run, it is still up to you to run dselect and upgrade the
rest of the system. this is not an option - once you start upgrading
to hamm, you really have to do a complete upgrade...there are too many
incompatibilities between libc5 based bo (and rex) and the new libc6
based hamm. not completing the upgrade once you've started it will be a
lot more trouble and a lot more work than just going ahead and doing it.
depending on how many packages you have installed (and hence need to be
upgraded) and whether you have a local mirror of debian or not, this
could take half a day or a day to complete. if you've never done an
upgrade to hamm before, set aside at least a day. if you've done it
several times before, it'll be about half a day.
Think carefully about whether you want to do this or whether you have
the time to do this before you start. You'll end up with a much newer
system with all the latest stuff (including bug fixes and security
fixes) but it may cost you a day or more of anger, frustration, and hard
work to get there...running the unstable release can be very rewarding
but it has it's price too.
If stability is more important to you than bleeding edge then DO NOT
UPGRADE.
if you decide to do the upgrade, remember the usual rules with dselect:
1. Go through the "Update" and "Select" phases.
2. Then "Install". If any problems, choose "Configure".
3. Then repeat the "Install" followed by "Configure" until dselect reports
no problems.
4. Then "Remove" and finally "Quit".
the other thing to remember about dselect is that the error messages
it prints usually look a lot more serious than they really are - don't
panic, just repeat the Configure & Install cycle as often as necessary.
Occasionally you might have to shell out of dselect temporarily and use
dpkg to install or remove a package or two by hand (this is more likely
the longer you leave it between upgrades).
if none of the above makes any sense to you then wait for hamm to be
released as the new stable Debian 2.0 release. the upgrade will have
been thoroughly tested(*) by then and will be a lot easier to get through.
(*) from bo, at least. maybe not as an upgrade from rex. but you could
always upgrade from rex to bo (which has been tested) and then
immediately upgrade to hamm.
craig
--
craig sanders
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