Debian 1.3.1 --> 2.0: a wise move?
I have read a lot on this list about the Debian 2.0 and with great
expectation I started the upgrade process last Thursday evening.
At first I was impressed with the apt-script I used to upgrade my
system which have been running smoothly.
I bought the official CD's from LSL as well as the non-free and
contrib CD's.
After reading a lot about exim's good qualities, I decided to replace
smail with exim. I could again not get exim to work. I never had a
problem to get smail to work with 1.1 - 1.3.1. However it took me
more than 24 hours to get some sort of email system working again. I
tried exim about 5 time, sendmail, qmail and smail. Qmail's
configuration script aborted giving some error message that some
control should by do manually. I could nowhere in the documentation
find out what that means.
Exim would not deliver mail locally or to my ISP (dialup-connection).
I could not get it to configure properly.
Smail's configuration files changed from my previous version and the
old configuration did not work anymore.
Sendmail had the nicest configuration script but I that's all. I
could get not get sendmail to usr /var/spool/mail.
I even installed Zmailer, but could do nothing with it.
In the end, by permutation of installation options I could get smail
delivering mail to the ISP as well as locally.
Then I wanted to compile pine from the non-free disk. But there was
no pine source. I then downloaded a binary rpm package of pine using
my slow 14400 modem, tried to convert it by alien, but the process
failed because of some library error in the package.
I tried mutt, but did not like it.
I installed postgresql 6.3.2. Previously I had it running not as a
debian package installed in /usr/local. I uses python programs to
connect with postgresql. My previous python was 1.5 installed in
/usr/local. Now installed 1.5.1 as a debian package and it worked.
But my pygres module would not connect to postgresql even after
recompiling it. After a few days, I still cannot use those programs
and that is of critical importance to me.
Staroffice 4 would not run anymore.It complains about not being able
to load libXt.so.6. I have important spreadsheets that I use
Staroffice for.
Lyx would not run because the correct libforms package was not
installed. It could not be found either on the Non free CD or contrib
CD. In the end I downloaded a Xforms RPM package, converted it using
alien and installed it, symlinked a libforms.so.0.88 library to
libforms.so.0.86 and installed lyx with force-depends. It does not
work satisfactorily. Lyx also complains about not finding the a4.sty
file. I did so far not have time to find out why.
XV was missing on the non-free CD.
For the first time I am using Xemacs20 - also to write this email in
the absence of pine. It is too early to tell whether I will return to
emacs.
Did I do the correct thing to try and upgrade? After 3 days I am not
sure. I am impressed by the large variety of available packages of
2.0. I am frustrated by the hours and days I have lost by struggling
to configure my mail transport agent and by the loss of Staroffice's,
Lyx's and Pygres's functionality and the absence of pine. I also
think that I may have lost some important email in the process.
I still have to find out whether I will be able to continue to use
Netscape and Mosaic on the new system. I suspect not.
Maybe someone has solutions for some of my problems and maybe someone
else will be warned that to upgrade is not just a simple problemless
process and that productivity for at least a few days can be
frustratingly low.
Johann
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| Johann Spies Windsorlaan 19 |
| jhspies@alpha.futurenet.co.za 3201 Pietermaritzburg |
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"For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain
salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us,
that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live
together with him."
I Thessalonians 5:9,10
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