Re: Newbie: slink-to-potato upgrade
On Sat, Nov 27, 1999 at 10:35:52PM +0100, Svante Signell wrote
> Hello,
>
> I recently installed slink on a new SCSI disk for my dual oc 450 MHz
> Celeron machine. (suse 6.2 is already on an IDE disk).
>
> Since I'm new to .deb-based systems I would like to ask a few questions:
>
> (I have been running RedHat since 5.0 up to 6.1 and rawhide, mandrake
> 6.1 and suse 6.2 on different machines, but all of them are rpm-based)
>
> I need to upgrade to a kernel supporting dual CPUs and also to
> XFree86-3.3.5 to get support for my TNT2-based graphics card.
>
> 1. What is the name of the kernel package: dpkg --list only gives
> kernel-headers and kernel-source.
If you want a SMP kernel (or if you know what you're doing) it's best
to build your own kernel, using the kernel-package package. That will
create a .deb containing specifically the kernel you want, with excellent
installation scripts that will ensure that everything goes smoothly.
The procedure:
- Install kernel-source-2.2.13*.deb and unpack the kernel source under
/usr/src/linux, or get it from wherever you normally do;
- cd /usr/src/linux; make menuconfig; make-kpkg kernel-image
- dpkg -i /usr/src/kernel-image-2.2.13*.deb
This doesn't replace your existing kernel if it's a different kernel
version, and it maintains a link to your 'immediate past kernel' at
/vmlinuz.old so you can leave yourself a 'safe option' by including
a stanza in /etc/lilo.conf to boot /vmlinuz.old.
To build the kernel on x86 you need the make, gcc (that's 2.7.2, not egcs),
binutils and bin86 packages; to do 'make menuconfig' you need libncurses4-dev
and libc6-dev, and to do 'make xconfig' you need tk-dev (e.g., tk4.2-dev or
tk8.0-dev). And kernel-package, of course.
> 2. Which command to use for kernel upgrade?
If you use kernel-package just install the .deb, answer the questions
and reboot.
> 3. Which tools to use, apt, dselect and/or dpkg?
dpkg.
> 4. Which tool correspond to rpm and yast?
Depends what you mean. Dpkg does low level package manipulation
on individual .deb files, dselect & apt do high-level package
manipulation using package repositories and dependency checking.
If you want to install .rpm'd software, alien builds .debs on-the-fly
(but you have to be a little careful about differences in filesystem
layout).
> 5. I installed the scientific workstation, thereby missing the install
> of eg. gnome. I want to run Windowmaker/Enlightenment and
> gnome. What to do?
If you have apt installed, you can try something like this:
apt-get install wmaker-gnome enlightenment gnome-session control-center
which should drag in most of the binaries you need to start. The
gnome in 'slink' is pretty old now, and later 'unofficial' package sets
are around that give slink a more recent gnome suite; if you migrate to
potato, that has more recent copies. Potato and most of the unofficial
gnome sets have 'meta-packages' with names like task-gnome-network that
simplify package selection by requiring reasonably complete, coherent
suites of packages relevant to the role suggested by their name.
I suggest that you look over the archives of this mailing list for
posts pointing to these, and also to other unofficial and semi-official
package repositories. These include package sets for October GNOME,
XFree86 3.3.5 and so on.
When you look at a package repository you can download and browse through
the Packages.gz file that it includes to see what packages are there, what
they rely on, and so on.
> 6. How can I get a comprehensive listing of the packages installed
> on my computer?
dpkg -l | less
> 7. How can I easily get rid of the unwanted ones?
dpkg --purge unwanted-package
or
dpkg -r unwanted-package (leaves config files behind, useful if you will be
re-installing later)
or
apt-get install unwanted-package-
(the trailing '-' says to uninstall it).
Both dpkg --purfe, dpkg -r and apt-get install can handle multiple
package names on the command line.
> 8. apt-get upgrade + apt-get dist-upgrade ends with some files not
> found. The suggested fix was to add --fix-missing. How can I
> update the missing parts or remove the no longer supported packages.
Umm... pass. This may relate to the fact that Potato is being updated
continuously, and at any one time the Packages file provided may not
quite line up with what's available. Try again may be enough.
> 9. dselect interface and beginners guide are not informative enough to
> guide you to an upgrade easily.
Agreed, but I think it is assumed that people upgrading already have enough
debian experience to do OK. Maintenance of dselect seems to be a real
problem; I haven't looked, but I understand that it isn't very clean or
clear at the source level, and it is no longer maintained by its original
author. While it clearly has its deficiencies, what it does it does well
enough that people are reluctant to start tinkering with it.
> 10. dselect is confusing with its immediate help screen if something
> is not OK.
Once you get the hang of it it's not so bad, but that is obviously
of little consolation to the first-time user (and then, most seasoned
debian users don't use dselect after installation anyway).
John P.
--
huiac@camtech.net.au
john@huiac.apana.org.au
"Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." - Bill Gates in Denmark
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